Lent 2015 Issue 6

19 February 2015 Vol. 16 Lent Issue 6

The

Cambridge Student

Flipping marvellous: can you spot the rogue pancake and the intrepid flipper that ventured onto the roof of Clare College on Shrove Tuesday?

Image: Alex McBride

“Grossly unfair”: Chronic disparity in college rents

A

Jenny Steinitz and Ellie Hayward News and Investigation Editors

n investigation by The Cambridge Student comparing rent prices at Undergraduate colleges has revealed consistent and significant disparities in price and range across the University.

While the University website advertises the typical college accommodation as ranging from £90 to £120 a week, in reality the price range within Cambridge is significantly wider, and it is clear that there are substantial differences in the amount of rent students can expect to pay depending on the college they attend.

Although most colleges do not hold collated data on average rent prices, of those that do, King’s provides the

cheapest average weekly rent at £91, while Newnham – where all students in each year group pay the same price – is the most expensive, with students paying weekly rent from £131 (the 2012 cohort) to £146.70 (the 2014 cohort).

All cohorts at Newnham are paying in excess of the standard maintenance loan of £3,610. The 2014 cohort of Newnham students are paying around £4,410 for a 30-week license, compared to the £3,390 for the 2012 cohort. This is despite the fact that Newnham is classed as a ‘Medium Wealth’ college that does not have bedders, maintains only one porters’ lodge and has limited numbers of ensuite rooms.

Consistently high rents at Newnham College prompted the JCR Committee to produce an internal report directed to the college in 2014. The report expressed the dissatisfaction of the JCR proper: 84% of undergraduates disagree or strongly disagree with the statement that “our rents are fair” and that 89% of undergraduates disagree or strongly disagree with the statement that “our kitchen fixed charge is fair.”

Katie Akers, Newnham JCR President, commented: “Discussions [with the College] have been going on for the past year, and we have every hope of progress”.

Continued on page four...

Comment – Should University be a secular space?: p11 Interviews – Ollie Locke on snogging 32 people in Cindies and ‘normal’ life: p14 Features – The good, the bad and the ugly of communal living: p17 Sport – The abominable Eoin Morgan and the plight of English Cricket: p30

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

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News 2 Further setbacks for new Cambridge Science Park station Imran Marashli News Reporter Cambridge’s proposed second railway station has been delayed until December 2016, one year after the originally expected opening date of December 2015. This revelation, which was announced on Saturday by Cambridge News, is due to Network Rail’s resubmission of their proposals after the project was initially approved.

The Cambridge Science Park Station, as it will be known, is set to reduce the congestion and pressure on Cambridge’s one current railway station.

This will be done by locating it in the northern suburb of Chesterton, and it is hoped that it will serve 3,000 passengers daily, as well as providing parking space for 450 cars and 1,000 bicycles.

The station will connect with the route that goes on towards King’s Cross and Liverpool Street, in addition to Norwich, Stansted Airport and Birmingham. This will thereby improve Cambridge’s infrastructural links with East Anglia, the capital and the West Midlands.

Although the County Council will provide bus and cycle routes to the station, the railway station, car parks, cycle parking and bus stops will all

be provided by Network Rail. Hence Network Rail’s latest amendments to its own proposals have slowed down the entire project.

The latest delay in opening the new station could prove inconvenient for local residents, whose car-parking space could be reduced.

Gerri Bird, the Councillor for East Chesterton, remains sceptical about the sufficiency of the proposed car park.

She commented: “People will park outside residents’ houses. What will no doubt happen is that residents will have to get parking permits, which for those on low incomes or benefits, would be unaffordable.

Would Network Rail pay for these?”

The postponement may also have an impact on the many Cambridge students who rely on the station and its bicycle facilities in particular.

Jemima Churchhouse, a student at Gonville and Caius College, remarked: “I don’t think it [the current railway station] is too crowded, since I’ve been there quite early in the morning.

There’s always fast service at the ticket desk. But in terms of facilities, I left my bike there, came back in the evening, and it had moved. They just moved my bike 500 metres away and it took me quite a long time to Maybe a new station will cheer him up? find it.”

HSPS and PPS students have this week complained about a proposal to divide the SPS library into different sections and to move much of the material to the Sidgwick site.

The plans include moving the Politics undergraduate reading lists to the Sidgwick site, moving the International Studies collection (which serves mostly MPhils) to the Sidgwick site (though to a different location from the Politics section), and moving other identifiable politics stock to Sidgwick (i.e. old and non-reading list titles).

The University is aiming to divide up the SPS library in to different sections and move much of it to the Sidgwick site. The SPS Library does, however, plan to ensure that any shortages in the Sociology provision would be compensated for by a new purchase.

Student representatives expressed their concern in an internal email sent to all Part I HSPS students, arguing that the divisions “would negatively affect our undergraduate experience”. They added that “the multidisciplinary selection of books represents the nature of the HSPS

Tripos” and therefore should “definitely be maintained”. They called on students who had concerns about the move to contact their student representatives as soon as possible.

However, one third-year PPS student commented: “I don’t actually think the division will be that big a deal, especially as HSPS students tend to specialise by second-year. I go to a hill college, and this move means that I won’t have to make separate trips to go to lectures on the Sidgwick site and to get books from the SPS library in the New Museums Site. The main complaints are coming from town college students who can’t be bothered to walk a few hundred metres to Sidgwick.”

However, Jack Lewy a first-year HSPS student, told The Cambridge Student that “as somebody who hopes to specialise in Politics in their second year, it makes a lot of sense for my library sources to be close to where I have most of my lectures. I think ultimately the decision does not impact students as much as criticism seems to suggest it will.”

The move is planned for Summer 2015, and a decision may be made as soon as April.

Image: mattbuck

Cambridge Police to stop reviewing CCTV for bike thefts

SPS Library uproar from students Jenny Steinitz News Editor

Council hopes for 8,000 passengers annually in the first three years

Stevie Collister-Hertz News Reporter

The selection of subjects in the library reflects the varied nature of the HSPS Tripos

Cambridgeshire Police will no longer review CCTV footage following bike thefts, according to a new policy announced by Detective Chief Inspector Lorraine Parker on 10 February.

Due to the high quality of CCTV footage necessary for a successful conviction, Parker stated that police resources were better used “being reinvested in cycle crime prevention and hotspot identification”.

Bike theft is rampant in Cambridge with postcode area CB1 seeing 781 cycle thefts last year, the second highest in the country after Oxford. As one fresher told The Cambridge Student, “I don’t expect to finish my degree without my bike being stolen at least once.”

The move by the police to stop reviewing CCTV footage has been criticised, with one local resident, Richard Taylor, saying, “I think the police would be failing in their basic duties if they refused to consider evidence … bike theft is quite an important crime in Cambridge …

Cambridge residents’ bikes are often high value vehicles which they rely on to commute, shop and generally get around.”

However, one student backed Cambridgeshire Police’s decision, calling reviewing CCTV footage “a waste of police time”.

Another student, Julian Sutcliffe, a first-year at Peterhouse, agreed, saying, “There’s no point checking CCTV for bike thefts – so many bikes get stolen, you can’t know when it happened… I got my bike stolen in my very first week at Cambridge… but [the police] were really efficient about it – they were really good. They gave me a number and it was all on the insurance. They didn’t ever find the bike though.”

As an alternative, Cambridgeshire police are emphasising theft prevention, with DCI Parker responding that “the police [are] putting hundreds of hours of work into giving advice to new students aimed at reducing bike thefts”. This comes after 2014 saw the highest ever seasonal October spike of cycle thefts.

Sutcliffe agreed with this focus, saying “get a d-lock – that’s all you can do”.

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

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News 3 Mary Beard embroiled in no-platforming row Olly Hudson Deputy News Editor Cambridge academic and fellow of Newnham College, Mary Beard, has come under fire after signing an open letter opposing the tactic of ‘noplatforming’ controversial speakers.

The letter, published in The Observer on Sunday, highlighted the recent campaign that criticised the decision to give feminist academic, Germaine Greer, a platform to speak in the Cambridge Union in light of her perceived transphobic views.

Criticism was also levelled at the National Union of Students, for its policy of ‘no-platforming’ academic, Julie Bindel.

Reference was also made to condemnation of Cambridge Green Party candidate, Rupert Read, after The Cambridge Student reported accusations of transphobia when he appeared to question the use of the term ‘cis’, in a Twitter exchange. He has since apologised for those remarks.

Signed by other public figures, including LGBT+ rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell and feminist campaigner, Caroline Criado-Perez, the letter cites “a worrying pattern of intimidation and silencing of individuals whose views are deemed “transphobic”. It also calls

Beard: “I went to bed wanting to weep”

Image: Yukiko Matsuoka

on universities to “stand up to attempts at intimidation and affirm their support for the basic principles of democratic political exchange.” Commenting on her blog, Professor Beard wrote, “Last night I went to bed wanting to weep”, after

she was subject to Twitter trolling and accusations of transphobia. Rejecting this, Beard went on: “I was NOT signing up to an attack on the trans community.

Nor was there any remote suggestion that I was.”

University-wide gender gap in exam peformance Tonicha Upham and Jenny Steinitz Deputy News Editor and News Editor Further to The Cambridge Student’s article on the disparity in performance by male and female students in Part I of the History Tripos, more research suggests that this problematic gender gap is University-wide.

Statistics obtained from reports on the University of Cambridge’s website indicate that male students perform disproportionately better than female students in certain courses.

STEM subjects have the most notable gender discrepancies. Engineering, for instance, has a huge gender imbalance in the proportions of Firsts awarded to male and female candidates.

In 2014, 31.1% of male Engineering students achieved a First, compared to 13.6% of the female Engineering students, and similar figures apply to the same set of results from each of the last five years.

Computer Science also has a

significant gap in top outcomes for its male and female students. For example in 2014, Firsts were awarded to 27.9% of male and 11.1% of female students.

However, given the large discrepancies in the numbers of male and female students within the Computer Science Tripos, this converts in raw numbers to just 19 male students and 1 female student. In the same course, 4.4% of male students were awarded a Third, compared to 33.3% of female students.

STEM subjects also experience a significant gender gap in terms of applications and successful applications; in the 2013 application cycle, 64% of acceptances for science courses were male, and only 36% female.

Across the University, too, there is definite evidence of disparity. 29.1% of male students received Firsts, compared to 19.8% of female students.

This has been a fairly consistent trend over the last decade, ranging between 25.3% (2004) and 29.1% (2014) for male students, and 16.9% (2009) and 19.8% (2014) for female students.

One third-year female student commented: “The gender gap in exam

In a comment to PinkNews, campaigner Peter Tatchell issued a forceful rebuttal to accusations: “I have a 40 year record of supporting trans people and rights.”

He added: “I am now told that my support for the trans community is not wanted. ” CUSU LGBT+ Trans* and Intersex rep, Robin Cummings, issued the following statement: “I agree that everyone has a right to freedom of speech. However, being given a platform from which to share those views more widely is more active than allowing speech; thus being denied a platform does not equal censorship.”

He also added, “In the cases of Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel, these two women had previously expressed undeniably transmisogynistic views on multiple occasions – views which amount to denying that trans women are women.”

CUSU LGBT+ Trans campaign clarified their position to TCS, denying that actions taken against the invitation of Germaine Greer were “a case of straightforward no-platforming”.

Several No-platforming controversies have dominated Cambridge in recent months. The Cambridge Union’s decision to invite the Israeli Ambassador sparked a protest by PalSoc, and Nigel Farage had to cancel a speaker event after a similar threat.

performance is extremely concerning, but I’m not sure exactly what can be done about it.

“The gap can only be closed once access schemes, application processes and the content and marking of exams are seriously reconsidered.

“However, since the University is

Mary Beard has signed an open letter opposing the noplatforming controversial speakers

such a conservative institution, I really doubt that anything will get done about this.”

On Twitter, the parody account A Sensitive Scholar tweeted “Do better?

Exam scripts are marked anonymously.

All this does is prove what I’ve often said: men are better than women.”

29.1% of male students received firsts compared to 19.8% of female students

The University wide gender gap

Image: Anna Carruthers via Infogram

19 February 2015

the cambridge student

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News Continued from page 1...

A Newnham student said: “I have mixed feelings. Yes, they are ridiculously high, however I personally get a large grant from both the University and College, so the high rents do not affect me as much as they might.

“Still, I could be spending that grant on, I don’t know, food.”

At two colleges, Girton and Newnham, all students in each year group pay the same price regardless of their room. A third-year Girton student commented: “I think in many ways it is the best system to have as it’s a much more egalitarian system and reduces any divisions based on wealth.”

Despite this, the rent prices at both Girton and Newnham are at the very high end of the scale. First-year students at Girton, for example, all pay £132 per week for their rooms.

One Girton student was disheartened by the fact the rent was so high for an out-of-town college: “It seems unfair that our rent prices are considerably higher than most town colleges, especially considering that we often accumulate extra transport costs due to the distance from town.”

This is compared to the other out-oftown college, Homerton, which has an average weekly rent of £104.

At the other end of the spectrum, some colleges offer consistently cheap

4 rents. This includes Pembroke and St John’s, who both share the same average rent price of just £97, with rooms available for prices as low as £75 and £67 respectively.

The cheapest possible accommodation can be found at Trinity Hall, coming in at just £61.50 a week, while Queens’ offers the most expensive weekly rate of £185.

Some colleges have huge variations in room prices. The highest intracollege rate is at Queens’, where there is a difference of over £100 between the cheapest rent of £81 a week, and the most expensive of £185 a week.

One Queens’ student commented to TCS: “I think it’s positive because it allows people who want to spend more on their rooms to have that option, whilst also accommodating people on lower budgets.”

As a result of the discovery of the huge variation in rents across the University, some students have started to ask questions about the University’s claim to have a significantly cheaper average weekly rent than the East of England average of £143.57. One anonymous second-year commented: “I view rent discrepancies across the University to be grossly unfair as they mean that colleges with a larger endowment are able to subsidise the costs significantly, whilst others leave their students to foot the bill.”

The cheapest weekly rent can be found at Trinity Hall, while Queens’ is the most expensive

Is this really worth £147 a week?

Image: Jack May

Dropped ex-Oxford Union President rape case reviewed Catherine Maguire Deputy News Editor

The case was dropped however the alleged victim has appealed the decision

A highly publicised rape case which was brought against the former president of the Oxford Union, but then dropped, is to be reviewed.

Ben Sullivan, a History and Politics student at Christ Church College, was arrested in May on suspicion of rape and attempted rape. The case was confirmed to be dropped a month later.

However, the alleged victim has subsequently appealed the decision. A spokesperson for the Crown Prosecution said: “A request has been made through the CPS Victims’ Right to Review (VRR) scheme for a review of the decision of no further action in this case. The VRR scheme gives victims the right to request a review of a CPS decision not to prosecute or to terminate criminal proceedings.”

After the case was dropped, Mr Sullivan publicly supported the right to anonymity for those arrested on suspicion of rape, arguing on BBC Newsnight that identities be protected “until the conclusion of a preliminary investigation”.

Speaking to the Mail on Sunday, Sullivan admitted that his “whole life has been rifled through and examined. It has been utterly draining.”

“But did I ever have a moment of self-doubt? Did I ever think ‘Am I sure I remember exactly what happened?’

No, never. Not once. Yes, I had sex with the girl who claimed I raped her. But it was consensual. That is the truth.”

The alleged incident is said to have taken place in April 2013, when Sullivan and around 20 other students met for a night out.

When news broke of his arrest, a spokesperson for Oxford Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Centre said: “We are concerned that singling out rape and sexual offences for defendant anonymity serves only to entrench a myth that women who report these crimes are more likely to be lying than someone who is reporting another kind of crime.

“Research from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) published last year dismissed this myth, reporting that false rape allegations are ‘very rare’ and possibly make up as little as 1% of all reports.”

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

News 5 New stats show students not deterred by hiked tuition fees Jack Lewy Deputy News Editor Analysis by Times Higher Education (THE) has revealed the trends in university admissions for this year, showing that more students than ever are taking up places at university.

This has defied expectations that the rise in tuition fees would make university a less appealing prospect, especially for poorer students.

The research identified the six major trends in university admissions using data gained from UCAS’ 2014 End of Cycle Report and compared the findings with previous years.

Not only was it revealed that more students than ever are going to university – with more than 500,000 students taking up the offer of a place in 2014 – but it was shown that students from disadvantaged areas in Britain are now 40% more likely to enter the highest-tariff institutions than they were in 2011.

However, whilst these stats regarding widening participation seem optimistic, the fact remains that students from disadvantaged areas remain seven times less likely to enter such institutions than their more affluent counterparts.

Furthermore, the absolute rise in

successful applicants from the most advantaged backgrounds proves to be more than double the number of students from poorer areas.

Conor Ryan, director of research and communications at the Sutton Trust, told THE that there was still a big issue regarding widening participation at most prestigious universities: “One of the concerns that we have, for example, is teachers’ perceptions of Oxbridge. A Sutton Trust poll last year showed that 45% of state school-teachers believe that up to 30% of students at Oxford and Cambridge are state schoolleavers, when in fact the proportion is about 60%.”

More promisingly however, the statistics showed that a greater number of young people with BTECs are going to university, but ironically, poorer students growing up in Oxford and Cambridge are placed at significant disadvantage in gaining entry to university than their counterparts in Wolverhampton and Blackpool. Of school-age students who study BTEC qualifications in Cambridge, 1% go on to university, whereas this figure stands at 17% for parts of Wolverhampton.

The rise in university admissions has

“The rise in admissions has been attributed to the appalling state of the labour market”

been attributed to the appalling state of the labour market for young people, with the author stating that “the higher education sector is a safe haven in troubled times.”

Furthermore, it has recently been announced that UCAS will be changing its current regulations to allow UK students to apply to European institutions, where tuition fees are much lower than in Britain.

In response, Shreya Nanda, a secondyear economist commented: “To really help graduates and the economy, we need to look at how the higher education market integrates with the labour market – like the Labour Party’s plan to

Accessible to all?

expand already popular earn-while-youlearn technical degrees.” Helena Blair, CUSU Access and Funding Officer, commented: “Living in the present, pressured to quickly make choices about their future, and faced with the current level of youth unemployment, university is an increasingly appealing option for people finishing school ... it’s crucial that people know their options and are not disadvantaged or discouraged from aspiring high.

“However, equally important is that students are not left victims of a market higher education system, which piles the implications of a flawed economy upon those least to blame.”

Photo: Foshie via Flickr

Former financial officer admits defrauding Palin pulls out, Buzz flies in Pembroke College of over 285k Colm Murphy and Jenny Steinitz stars in her own reality television show Jenny Steinitz News Editor Jacqueline Balaam has this week pleaded guilty to abusing her position as a former finance officer of the University of Cambridge in order to steal thousands of pounds from Pembroke College. Ms Balaam had stood accused of falsifying invoices to the tune of £285,986.18. The offences took place between June 2012 and January 2014.

Ms Balaam was suspended, and then later dismissed by Pembroke College in January 2014 following the discovery by the College of serious financial irregularities in their accounts.

The University was not the only entity to be defrauded, and Ms Balaam stood accused of three separate offences. This included false accounting and defrauding Girton Social Club of an unspecified amount of money between December 2010 and January 2014.

Ms Balaam has been granted bail and will return to court on 16 March for sentencing, where she could face a maximum of 10 years in prison.

The College issued a statement

following Ms Balaam’s guilty plea, expressing their “deep regret and sadness about this incident, which had miserable human consequences”.

They added: “The College’s losses were significantly covered by insurance and we are vigorously pursuing the recovery of the remaining losses. After an external review, changes have been implemented to our accounting processes so as to prevent such an eventuality occurring again.”

An undergraduate student at Pembroke expressed surprise regarding this: “We were emailed in the middle of November 2014 with regards to Ms Balaam’s crime, and told that any concerns we should have could be passed through the college’s Junior Parlour Committee and Graduate Parlour Committee. Based on the information released by Pembroke College, it seems that the incident has had little impact on the College itself, aside from leading to more secure accounting measures in order to prevent a repeat of this. As a student, I’ve heard little about this within Pembroke, but it is concerning that Ms Balaam’s actions went unnoticed for so long.”

Associate and News Editor

Balaam has stood accused of falsifying invoices of 285,986 pounds

The Union termcard underwent a topsyturvy two days this week. In an ongoing saga, headliner Sarah Palin dropped out only 24 hours before the marquee speaker event for astronaut Buzz Aldrin was finally reorganised.

Posting on their Facebook page on Tuesday, the Cambridge Union Society said: “We regret to announce that Sarah Palin will not be visiting the Cambridge Union during Lent Term 2015.” They said this was due to “scheduling difficulties”.

However, they did put forward the possibility of a future visit, saying “We are exploring potential future dates.”

On Wednesday they announced that: “Following confirmation this morning, we are delighted to announce that Buzz Aldrin will be attending the Cambridge Union on 14 March.” Aldrin has previously agreed to speak at the Union on several occasions, including once this term. He has, however, pulled out of these previous speaking engagements.

Palin, the controversial American politician, was the first female Republican to be nominated for the Vice Presidency of the United States in 2008, and now

Sarah Palin’s Alaska. Aldrin performed the world’s first successful spacewalk in 1966, and was part of the historic Apollo 11 moonwalk on 20 July 1969.

On return to the USA, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The reshuffling of the termcard comes as the Union has been celebrating its Bicentenary year. This included a special debate on 7 February.

One Union member, who wishes to remain anonymous, was not impressed: “The Union doesn’t seem to know its ups from its downs at the moment. Will he or won’t he come? Next thing we know Palin will be back with several members of the Bush family in tow. The Union’s baffling omnishambles continues.”

Another member, commenting on Palin’s cancellation, said: “She was the main highlight of the term for me.

Obviously this was outside the Union’s control – I’m told this kind of thing happens all the time. But it doesn’t make it any less disappointing.”

The Cambridge Student has reached out to the Union for further clarification on the nature of the “scheduling difficulties” for the Palin event, but is yet to receive a reply.

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

News 6 College Watch

Images: Hannah Taylor (above), Jessica McHugh (below)

Selwyn

Wolfson

Homerton

Caius

Selwyn students were left horrified this week after a much-anticipated pancakeflipping relay race was cancelled due to “health and safety” concerns. The event was going to take place in Selwyn Gardens on Tuesday, or ‘Pancake Day’ to the uninitiated. However, on Monday, a disappointed JCR Ents Officer Joyti Tiwani was forced to announce on Facebook that “after inspection with the rain today we won’t be allowed to have this event”. She assured students that the college “will be selling large pancakes at breakfast” as compensation.

The ‘flipping’ awful news has been met with disbelief and ridicule from some quarters. One Selwyn student said: “it seems extremely overcautious. I mean, falling over in the gardens would only stain your skinny jeans at most”. Perhaps it is better that nobody’s Pancake Day is marred by relay related injuries.

Wolfson welcomed Valentine’s weekend with the Anti-Valentine’s Day themed bop ‘Cupid is Stupid’. Eli Keren, VicePresident of Wolfson MCR explained: “When the day before Valentine’s is Friday the 13th, a soppy ‘Love Is In the Air’ style bop didn’t really seem to fit.”

Love hearts were given out on the door and chlamydia testing representatives from the NHS handed out free condoms in exchange for a small vial of urine. Ents Officer Michael Friedman added: “The bop was, as always, full and super fun, with a negligible amount of radiators being ripped off the wall, compared to our January bop.” However, one student said: “Unfortunately the bop was a bit... dead. It was a back-to-back 80s music fest that theoretically would’ve been great, but in practice was awkward”.

Keren was more positive: “Who knows, maybe someone even found love.”

Homerton’s male drinking societies were embroiled in scandal last week, as a pub cricket trip dissolved into chaos.

Rival societies The Epicureans and The Blaggards [sic] dropped into Downing Bar at the end of the night after a strong showing from both teams (scores are not yet known). After taking advantage of the notoriously cheap drinks, the Homertonians soon drew unwelcome attention to themselves and bar staff called the Porters. The night ended in disorder as Homertonians were thrown out, vaulting hedges as they left. Those who weren’t launching a tirade of abuse at the Downing Porters approached the Lodge to apologise, meaning that the Porters knew which Dean to call the following morning. In relation to other incidents, senior figures at Homerton are apparently assessing the suggestion that bops should no longer be allowed.

Caius Politics Society’s apparent bid for global notoriety continues apace this week with an event featuring none other than infamous Green Parliamentary Candidate Rupert Read. He has been in the limelight of late due to allegedly transphobic comments on his blog, but will speak on why Green politics is the true heir to Liberalism, Socialism and Conservatism. The society rose to prominence with an abortive debate on the motion ‘This College would not condone gay marriage’, swiftly followed by a second on ‘This House would limit free speech further to avoid offence’.

Neither of the events actually took place, leading to entirely unfounded accusations from one third year, who wished to remain anonymous, that “Caius Politics Society doesn’t actually exist. It can only be a front by the college to distract from an impending rent rise”.

Colm Murphy

Shilpita Mathews

Brendan Kelly

Sam Rhodes

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

News 7 Over £200 million overpayments on student grants uncovered Jack Lewy Deputy News Editor The Student Loans Company (SLC) has overpaid more than £200 million of student grants in the past three years.

According to Times Higher Education, which obtained the data under the Freedom of Information Act, there has been a steady rise in the number of overpayments of student grants since the passing of the Higher Education Act in 2004, which saw the introduction of major changes to student funding.

The statistics obtained show that more than £132 million of the £210 million overpaid between the academic years 2011/12 and 2013/14 is still outstanding, despite claims made by the SLC that they have a “robust system to pursue all borrowers for repayment of overpaid grants”.

Approximately 50,000 students in each of the years in question have received more funding in the form of grants than they were entitled to since 2010, according to data supplied for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Grant overpayments were seen to have peaked in 2012-13, when the total figure increased by more than £10 million compared with the previous year. In that time period, almost £75

million was overpaid in England alone.

Labour’s shadow universities, science and skills minister, Liam Byrne, criticised the figures, commenting that “these overpayments are a serious issue, and I will be putting down parliamentary questions to get to the bottom of the matter.”

When contacted by Times Higher Education, the SLC declined to comment on whether or not it was concerned about the size of the figure.

However, they did say that they were under a legal obligation to pursue any overpayments that occur.

In an attempt to recoup its lost money, the company is able to deduct the amount owed from any future grants a student is entitled to or, in cases where a student is no longer studying at university, the company can seek a repayment in the future. A spokesman said, when discussing potential repayments, that “customers can arrange an affordable repayment schedule based on their financial circumstances”.

There are a number of issues which have led to these overpayments by the SLC, including changes of circumstance for various students, students who have discontinued their studies, and bureaucratic mistakes.

The overpayments were also triggered

“It is an outrage that some students have been given more than others”

Overpayments had a number of origns

Image: Lendingmemo.com

in part by fraudulent claims and miscalculations of household incomes.

According to the SLC, no record has been kept of the extent to which each factor has contributed to the overall tally of overpayments.

One economics student at Trinity College was devastated by the news of the multi-million pound overpayments.

Speaking to The Cambridge Student,

they said: “It is an outrage that some students have been given more than others, and that the government is unable to properly regulate such an important institution.”

According to Times Higher Education, this issue was first raised in April 2014 by then-universities and science minister David Willetts, in an annual performance letter.

Cambridge stands divided over #endweek5blues reading week campaign Olly Hudson Deputy News Editor Cambridge Defend Education have led action this week in support of the #endweek5blues campaign. The action comes after The Cambridge Student reported in January that CUSU had voted to officially back a reading week.

A number of students have resorted

Jack Wright given a platform

to direct action in the form of a ‘week five boycott’, refusing to hand in work in protest at the University’s lack of a reading week. The campaign intends to highlight the pressures faced by those suffering from mental health problems as a consequence of the University’s short, work-intensive terms.

CDE also held a rally outside Senate House on Wednesday, and encouraged students to wear pinned blue squares

to show solidarity for the campaign.

The crowd was addressed by CUSU Welfare and Rights Officer Jack Wright. A petition has been launched via Change.org, arguing that a reading week “will contribute towards making the University a better, healthier and more accessible place of learning”.

The petition has so far attracted over 390 signatures.

In a blog for The Huffington Post, Daisy Hughes, a Cambridge student taking action this week in support of the campaign, argued: “A reading week won’t mean that I work any less hard or do any less well in my degree. It is not a case of watering down the ‘Cambridge Experience’ or the academic work done here. It’s simply an acknowledgement that we all work better when we have time to be people as well.”

She added: “The best academic work doesn’t come from students who haven’t slept all night and who are constantly stressed and anxious and unhappy because of deadlines.”

Although the campaign has attracted loud support, the student body nonetheless remains divided over the topic. Notably, St John’s College JCR this week issued a statement opposing Image: Colm Murphy the campaign, calling for “clear research

A petition has so far attracted over 390 signatures.

into how much work, if any, college supervisors would plan to set during this reading week, and if colleges would intend to set any form of progress test after this period.”

Victoria Brown, an undergraduate historian at St John’s, praised the statement on Twitter: “So proud of my JCR for this statement regarding CUSU’s campaign for a reading week #commonsense.”

One first-year HSPS student also voiced concerns to TCS about the campaign: “I know that the campaign assures us that supervisors would not be allowed to set extra work but I fail to see how this could be ensured in practice.

The campaign’s aims are laudable but I think that it hasn’t sufficiently taken into account the negative financial and mental impact a reading week could have on many students.”

Many colleges have issued guidance to students, assuring that those students who take part in the boycott will not face disciplinary action. Senior Tutor of Sidney Sussex College, Max Beber, urged students in an email to “consider carefully the possible impact of any consequent disruption in your supervision schedule on your overall academic progress.”

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

Science & Research

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

9

Many friends make light work Shreya Kulkarni Science & Research Editor Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

That well known phrase reminds us that each individual perceives things differently. But, more interesting is the fact that each individual’s perception can be changed by certain factors. You must have experienced this yourself: having the unfortunate luck of being forced to cycle up Castle Hill, Cambridge’s only hill, to get home, after a tiring mroning of lectures. Just by feeling the weight of your folder laden rucksack, makes that formidable hill seem all the taller, like a cycle ride up the slopes of Mt Everest.

Whilst most of you must think I’m exaggerating, scientists have shown that a heavy rucksack actually does make a person perceive a hill to be steeper.

The theory is based on the ‘Economy of Action’, suggested by Professor Proffitt of the University of Virginia, that before we make an action our brains evaluate what our current level of resources are and accordingly change our perception.

So, having a heavy rucksack means we’ll need more energy to climb a hill, and by perceiving it to be steeper we’re less likely to expend the energy. These ‘resources’ apply to other body states, whether we’ve had an energy drink that’s sugar free or if we’re in a poor physical

state, as in old age or after an exhausting run, we’ll think a hill steeper or a task more difficult.

So far, so good: if we don’t have the energy or resources our ‘brains’ would be less likely to plan another tiring action.

That being said, it’s not just physical resources that change our perceptions, ‘pyschosocial’ resources can also alter how we see demanding actions.

These ‘pyschosocial’ resources include social support from our friends and pets, and how we perceive ourselves socially. So just as a sugary drink makes a hill seem less steep, having a friend can do the same. Work by Dr Simone Schnall and collagues of the University of Cambridge’s Physchology Department found that having a friend we feel quite close to, or have known for a long period of time, decreased the slope perceived.

In contrast, having a person we didn’t particularly like acted to increase the slope. Amazingly the same effects were seen when, instead of a friend being close, subjects of a study were asked to think of a friend.

Friends, and our furry, fluffy pets, make up our social support network which help lighten the load, especially in the face of challenges. And in Cambridge, where challenges are rife, the support of our friends can really help to unburden us.

Not only do our friends make hills

1

Rebecca Kershaw Science & Research Contributor

Not only do our friends make hills seem less steep, but they help us cope with stress better too

In a landmark study, researchers from the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research and Stem Cell Institute have shown that the order in which genetic mutations occur has a significant effect on not only the type, but the prognosis of cancers. Mutations can be genetic or occur through a random process (due to damage or errors in replication), however this study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, has shown that the order in which mutations occur is a major determinant of disease severity and the outcome of treatment. This was shown in stem cells taken from patients with a bone marrow disorder called myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN), which often leads to leukaemia. There are two known mutations associated with the disease and by studying single blood cells and the associated patient histories, it was found that symptoms appear ten years earlier with one mutation leading compared to the other.

This finding will undoubtedly improve treatment and prognosis accuracy for MPN patients, how “it is likely that this phenomenon occurs in many types of malignancy” and will “give us powerful insights into the origins of cancer” according to Professor Green who led the study.

Friends: making mountains molehills

Image: Broo_am (AndyB)

seem less steep, but they help us cope with stress better too. In doing so, our social support promote lower levels of illnesses and give protection from a number of stress related illness, from cancers to the dreaded winter cold. They certainly make those last-minute essay crises easier to deal with!

So next time you have to face up to a challenging task, possibly finally facing the steep slopes of Castle Hill or attempting that long awaited essay, why not try increasing your ‘resources’ with some chocolate or better yet with a close friend. After all, many friends make light work.

2

3

One third of the global population is currently infected with Tuberculosis (TB), a highly contagious and often fatal bacterial infection. In recent years there has been a rapid increase in the number of cases of multidrug resistant (MDR) TB across almost every corner of the globe; MDR-TB requires years of treatment with extreme side-effects including kidney failure and permanent loss of hearing for a third of patients.

The Medical Research Council along with the Newton Trust have announced a £2 million collaboration between the University of Cambridge and Chennai National Institute for Research in Tuberculosis in India. India has one of the highest incidences of TB and Chennai has been involved in clinical trials for TB treatment for many years.

This collaboration aims to further the understanding of genetic mutations within the TB bacterium which lead to drug resistance and enable drug tolerance, and hope to develop novel approaches of enhancing the immune system. It will use this information to develop improved diagnostics and identify potential new treatment options “to improve patient outcomes through the use of state-of-the-art technologies” according to Professor Sharon Peacock.

The University of Cambridge has been chosen as one of three new ‘drug discovery institutes’, receiving £30 million from Alzheimer’s Research UK. This investment will create 90 new research positions in the field over the next five years in search for a cure for the neurodegenerative disease. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia and costs the UK £23 billion a year according to ARUK. There has been a rapidly increasing focus on this area of research over the last year after the G8 Dementia Summit. Recent advances in the understanding of the disease biology make this a promising time to find a disease modifying treatment.

The Drug Discovery Alliance will fund the new Cambridge Drug Discovery Institute on the Biomedical Campus at Addenbrookes.

Professor David Rubinsztein, the academic lead on this endeavour, said that “Its location on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus will give it unparalleled access to scientists, clinical researchers and patient cohorts, as well as strong links with pharma and biotech companies in the region.” The news comes at an apt time as work by the university’s Chemistry Department has uncovered a key chaperone that inhibits the pathology of Alziehmer’s Disease.

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Editorial 10 Printing in practice and the beauty of bias Jack May Editor-in-Chief

O

ne of the things we try to avoid in the high-octane, cut-throat world of student journalism is having a go at each other. We actually quite like each other. We even went for dinner once. I know. Radical.

Indeed, we read each other’s work – we’re all in the same game, heading for the same jobs, building the same networks, so it would make sense to keep an eye on each other, and The Tab’s Charlie Bell even sends us letters from time to time. Reading Raisa Ostapenko’s ‘Can the news ever be neutral’ in Friday 13 February’s issue of Varsity made for a conundrum, and raised a good few questions.

Journalism is a profession with immense power. Despite declines in print circulation, newspapers and news outlets hold immense sway over how we perceive the world around us. I don’t need to go into detail, but can probably just say the words Daily Mail and ‘immigrants’ and you’ll know exactly what I mean.

With that in mind, the very question ‘Can the news ever be neutral?’ is incredibly important – I don’t disagree with Raisa there. That being said, it’s likely that we come at the question from very different perspectives. When Raisa argues that “subjectivity […] has no place in news reporting” and that “our objectivity separates us from propagandists”, she’s got a point, but she’s also missed the point.

As an editor of a newspaper of any size, from a humble student weekly like The Cambridge Student to the beasts of The Guardian, and The Sun, you’re constantly faced with crucial decisions that can completely colour your coverage

of any given event. On a micro scale, you have to choose with which part of the story you ‘lead’. On our front page last week, we reported on the number of individuals intermitting over the past three years and how this affects various reported drop-out rates.

We could have focussed on the vast disparity between colleges, and the fact that mature colleges showed much higher rates of intermission. Instead, we pushed to lead on the University ‘angle’, even though it was much more complicated, and there were those both within and outside of our editorial team who advised us against it.

On a macro scale, we choose what appears on the front page of the paper every week. A lot of this is done on the back of requests submitted to colleges and the University under the Freedom of Information Act. As public bodies have 20 working days to respond to these requests, we have to plan far in advance which questions we want to ask, and whose affairs we want to investigate.

So far this term, we’ve taken on the University, challenging the limited scope of their living wage pledge, and we’ve questioned the statistics surrounding drop-out rates and intermitting students.

We could have followed different lines of enquiry, submitted different requests, and ‘splashed’ on different stories.

To say that “our duty is to present untarnished facts that allow people to form well-informed opinions” is to miss a fundamental stage in the production process of any piece of journalism.

In order for information to be readable, it has to be presented in a certain way, which inevitably means that some facts will be given greater weight, some will be omitted to keep within the allotted word count, and some will be juxtaposed with other information or reaction in

You have to think about what ethical and political principles guide your work

Corrections challenging ways.

These decisions are made on multiple levels. Practically, you have to consider your audience: what are readers interested in? What will make them stop and pick up a copy of the newspaper? If your paper is for sale, what will make the average person hand over their hardearned cash for the privilege of reading your newspaper?

On a personal level, you have to think about what ethical and political principles guide your work. For The Cambridge Student as a student newspaper, do we want to ‘punch down’ by exposing the dirty depths of student activist groups and permanently damage their often worthy causes?

Or, do we want to do our best to hold the vastly wealthy and powerful institutions that govern our lives and our studies to account, and in doing so try and enact positive change through wherever we can?

For Raisa to tell us that such “personal convictions” are “a betrayal of the fundamental, ethical principles of the profession: impartiality, fairness, and potentially even accuracy” is bizarre.

For most people working in “the profession”, accuracy is by far the most important of these. Even aside from the thorny and qualified reality of ‘freedom of the press’ thanks to the UK’s surprisingly stringent media law, inventing grand ideas like the “right to be informed human beings” certainly doesn’t help anyone.

I’ll happily say it, if you want me to: The Cambridge Student is biased. So is every publication you’ve ever read.

The process of journalism is one of decision after decision after decision, and to believe otherwise is naïve and intensely impractical.

Embrace it, and use your bias for good.

In last week’s issue, an article concerning changes to Churchill College’s JCR (‘“Nothing untoward” in Churchill JCR restructuring despite student anger’) was accompanied by an image, owned by Mike Peel, of The Maersk Mc-Kinney Møller Centre for Continuing Education.

As the centre is not part of Churchill College proper, we would like to apologise for any confusion caused by the misuse of this image.

Chief Sub Editors

Megan Proops Charlotte FurnissRoe

Sub Editors

Hayden Banks Sydney Patterson

Directors

Ciara Berry Rebecca Alldridge Jemma Stewart Siu Hong Yu Hazel Shearing Jack May

TCS Top Dogs

William Hewstone Sam Rhodes Alex McBride Char Furniss-Roe Charles Martland

An article in last week’s issue concerning the raiding of a Cambridgeshire lab (‘Cambridgeshire lab raided over cancer drug “not fit for humans”’) was wrongly attributed to Rachel Balmer, Deputy News Editor, in the byline. The article was in fact written by Helen Spokes, News Reporter, to whom we apologise for this mistake.

The Editor would like to apologise for continuing spiralling confusion relating to the misattribution of cats on page 11 of Issue Two in our ‘Creature feature’.

Our correction in last week’s issue, stating that Miss Furniss-Roe’s family does not own a cat, is in fact incorrect.

We have been reliably informed that the Furniss-Roe household is in possession of three cats. The correction pertaining to Ms Steinitz’s cat, originally featured in Issue Two, stands true at the time of going to print.

Clarification is due in relation to the two cats pictured on page 11 of Issue Two. The upper cat belongs to Ms. Stowell, as corrected in Issue Three. The lower cat, as corrected in Issue Five, belongs to Ms. Steinitz. However, we have not yet been able to trace the blackand-white cat apparently belonging to Mr Murphy, Associate Editor. Any assistance in this matter will be sincerely and heartily welcomed.

Lent Term Team 2015 Editor in Chief

Jack May

Dispatches Editor

Will Amor

Fashion Editor

Maddie Airlie

Associate Editors

Sam Rhodes Freya Sanders Colm Murphy

Comment Editors

Albi Stanley Rebecca Moore William Hewstone Bronte Phillips

Books Editor

Alice Mottram

Lifestyle Editors

Jessy Alhuwalia Lucy Meekley

Columns Editor

Sian Avery

Amelia Oakley Elsa Maishman Chase Smith

Sport Editor

Charles Martland Flora McFarlane

Julia Stanyard

Design Editor

Daisy Schofield

Harry Parker

Production Editor

Tom Saunders

Social Media Managers

Ru Merritt Yema Stowell

News Editors Deputy News

Jenny Steinitz Anna Carruthers

Interviews Editor

Rachel Balmer Features Editors Helen Spokes Shilpita Matthews Jack Lewy Tonicha Upham Food Editor Ollie Hudson Catherine Maguire Theatre Editors

Julius Haswell

Investigation Editor Ellie Hayward

Technology Editor

Sam Raby

Science Editor

TV & Film Editor

Grace Murray

Shreya Kulkarni

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Comment 11

Yes

Sam Rhodes Associate Editor

T

o me it seems almost ridiculous to be debating secularism in 2015. We, the religious, have lost whatever right we once claimed to impose our views on the wider populace, and quite rightly. The dreary institutional Christianity of yester year is, for the most part, long since gone. Whenever religion rears its head in the public sphere now, it does so shame-facedly, profoundly conscious of being a relic of the past.

But, like so many relics of the past, it lives on in Cambridge. Simply by keeping their heads down and blending in with the rest of the establishment, old college chapels manage to get away with spending untold sums of money on choirs, food and drink for their paltry congregations, and most of all on maintenance. Running a church in this era has far more in common with dusty antiquarianism than building a lively and engaged community. The grandiose architecture and overblown formality seem to bear little resemblance to anything Biblical, meaning even the Christians amongst us are often

dissatisfied. Tradition alone is no reason to continue to engage in anything; it was tradition that prevented Magdalene College from admitting female students until 1988. That these institutions continue to exist at the heart of most colleges is hardly surprising, but certainly not desirable.

However, as flawed as the chapel communities can be, CICCU is far worse. It may be unbliblical to worship in a building worth millions of pounds when Cambridge’s homeless population is painfully high, but at least most chapel communities will own up to this hypocrisy when pressed, and admittedly they are responsible for many of the better charities in Cambridge. CICCU also do good work, but once again this takes place behind closed doors.

In public they seem to understand on some level that no one really wants to listen to them (hence the bribes with food) but nonetheless continue to make noise. I have never met anyone who had a profound religious experience while talking to a student armed with a cold and disappointing toastie and a literalist view of the Bible. I have met many who find the antics of CICCU irrelevant at best, and offensive and patronising at worst. They consistently claim to represent Christianity as a whole while espousing views explicitly

Time and time again, whenever religion is given power, awful things almost inevitably happen

rejected by mainstream Anglicanism.

The behoodied and friendly demeanour masks some fairly unpleasant behaviour, including reports of the pigeonholes of gay students being specifically targeted with conversion literature, and meetings for those ‘struggling with the sin of homosexuality’. There is no problem whatsoever with CICCU existing as a private group (even if their views are profoundly objectionable) but they do not deserve a place at the public table simply by dint of being Christians.

Religion is at its best on a personal scale where the compassion and unity of local communities can come to the fore. Time and time again, whenever religion is given power, awful things almost inevitably follow. Turning our university into a secular space would not only allow those who want nothing to do with God to have some richly-deserved peace and quiet, but also profoundly benefit Christians who need a reminder that we were never intended to become the establishment.

More wealth on the walls than the collection plate

Image: FA2010

Should our University be an entirely secular space?

The way to God’s heart: through the stomach?

No Rosalind Peters Comment Contributer

D

espite being a Christian, I have had my doubts about the Christian InterCollegiate Christian Union’s endeavours to evangelise the student populace.

However, whatever one

Image: Jessica Spengl

might feel about evangelism and the methods CICCU employ to keep the message of God in students’ peripheral vision, I firmly support their right to do so. Some might object, “what about my right to wander the Sidgwick Site un-pamphleted and uninhibited by thoughts of God, salvation and the afterlife?”

Admittedly this questioning can be a bit annoying. But my question to you, unoriginal though it may be, is this: what makes your sense of entitlement more important than theirs?

What makes your sense of entitlement more important than theirs?

Christianity is, by its nature, a prosletysing religion (check out the New Testament if you don’t believe me - or hate me for encouraging you to check out the New Testament… to each their own). This being said, their choice of methods – ranging from suspiciously nice to bloody and barbarous – is often questionable. It would be pointless to argue otherwise. Nevertheless, it is one thing to object to the ways in which Christians seek to make their faith better known and understood; it is another thing entirely to strip them of their right to speak just so uninterested students can roam around without fearing the need to ponder potentially existential questions (God forbid!).

Regardless of your feelings on the subject, Christianity has played a fundamental part in the trajectory of British history and thereby our present situation at Univeristy. Living and studying in Cambridge, we walk past reminders of this legacy every day.

CICCU serves as a reminder that Christianity is an integral part of our history; it lives, breathes and evolves, and encourages us to consider questions bigger than ourselves. Granted, these big questions are often uncomfortable ones, ones that seem demanding to us in troubling times - but that does not mean no one has the right to remind us of them.

The idea that we might deconsecrate

college chapels to render them museums assumes that what they represent is archaic and outdated: patently, it is not.

The idea of converting chapels into multi-faith spaces is not necessarily a bad one and would be a bold statement about the lengths to which we will go to ensure the welcoming of diversity.

But I shudder at something which, deemed outdated, is overwritten – rather like nasty retro wallpaper being painted a nice, non-objectionable, modernist off-white. Christianity is not nasty retro wallpaper (even if a sizeable proportion of its adherents are of an age which fails to see the issue with beige geometric flowers in the kitchen). We don’t have to ‘paste over’ Christianity to encourage multi-faith engagement.

True inter-faith dialogue is firmly opposed to notions of supercessionism and homogenisation. Cambridge’s deep Christian roots do not stop the city and University from being one of the leading centres in the world for such inter-faith dialogue.

Ultimately, it boils down to freedom of expression: as a forward-thinking, educated society, we should not be foolhardy enough to think that secularisation of the academic space is the answer. Religion continues to be a powerful force in the world and in the student body. If you’ve got that much of a problem with it, don’t listen.

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Comment 12 The gender gap in the History Tripos is a symptom of a wider discrepancy Sriya Varaharajan Comment Contributor

T

he ‘gender gap’ indicated by the distribution of Firsts awarded in the History Tripos this week has raised a number of questions.

When exams are marked blind (candidates are identified by an arbitrary number, rather than a name) why does such a divide continue to exist?

Few, thankfully, have ascribed it to female candidates being naturally ‘worse’ at the subject. This generalisation would be simplistic, and misogynistic because of its simplicity.

It might be argued that although there are no names given, the handwriting might reveal the gender of the candidate.

But this relies on the stereotype of feminine neatness, which can hardly be cited as a genuine reason. The actual content of the essays themselves can have no real bearing on the results, as suggesting that it may implies that female students are somehow less capable of learning the same knowledge imparted with success to male students.

The fact that this divide seems to close between Part I and Part II would seem to give us some suggestion, perhaps leading us to infer that the relative lack of exams in Part II favours female students; however, there is no logical explanation

which would suggest girls are better at coursework than exams overall. The answer has to lie in the various exam techniques employed by each gender.

As any humanities student will tell you, half of the work in writing a good essay comes from the strength and credibility of the argument presented. You have to be confident in order to persuade the reader – as is true for pretty much any piece of argumentative writing. This is not just about how much you believe in what you’re saying, although that helps, nor is it solely about your ability to support your ideas with evidence; it comes across in the very words you use, in each ‘perhaps’, ‘maybe’, and ‘on the other hand’. For my own part, I’ve had many an essay handed back with each qualification circled in red biro.

Are girls more likely to take this approach? Studies have suggested that women “tend to prefer a more cautious or balanced approach”, and this would make sense, for the same reason that research shows that women apologise more than men. Ultimately, our voices are less confident, because the society we live in is surprised when we speak out at all. This is clear from the earliest stages of education. In the classroom, interruptions from boys are tolerated far more than interruptions from girls, and in general, teachers are less likely

Female voices are less confident because society is surprised when we speak out

to call on girls than they are to call on boys. Although few of us would say that we could remember this being our experience in primary and secondary education, it’s the very insidiousness of this bias that makes it dangerous.

Young girls are, at least, not nearly as encouraged as young boys are to speak, which undermines their confidence.

This translates into other areas of their academic life, including, of course, essay writing.

So to me, it’s clear that the gender gap in the History Tripos is a symptom of a societal flaw: the undervaluing of

female voices. The Faculty have said that they have been “conducting detailed enquiries” into the issue, but I believe that although mark schemes can be changed to take into account differences in writing techniques, change needs to occur on a far wider scale. The University can help, perhaps by ensuring that access schemes aimed at younger teenagers prioritise equal treatment, but in order to affect real change, we need to look individually at our own behaviours in our conversations with each other and ensure that we are giving ours and each others’ voices the respect they deserve.

She deserves to be encouraged to speak out

Image: lecat

‘Fifty Shades of Grey’: it’s not the sex that is the problem Connie Muttock Comment Contributor

A

s everyone with a functioning computer will be aware, this Valentine’s weekend was the film release of the much awaited, titillatingly pornographic Fifty Shades of Grey.

I, for one, was not to join the masses.

Having read the book a couple of years ago, I planned not to spend a precious

£7 to watch the film adaption of a fundamentally abusive relationship dressed up as a love story.

Leaving aside the romantic exaltations of Ana’s (puke) “inner goddess” and the steely stares of her conveniently handsome billionaire (complete with six pack), what E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey sells to us is domestic abuse.

I’m not talking about the violence of Grey’s (actually quite tame)

Ana : another passive heroine waiting for her hero

BDSM fetishes. What is far more problematic, as so many have thankfully noticed, is the ‘love-story’ concerning what goes outside of the ‘playroom’: Christian Grey is nothing short of a forceful, creepy and violent control-freak. The relationship is based around manipulative power play that we, the audience, are supposed to admire as being romantic, and supposedly even desire for ourselves in our own lives.

Particular plot incidences make this romanticisation very problematic.

When Ana agreed to sexual acts she wasn’t comfortable with, out of fear of his leaving, it was because she felt she couldn’t say ‘no’. When she told Grey to stop a certain sexual behaviour, he refused. When she agreed to a relationship on terms she wasn’t comfortable with, it was because his attention and his desires were far more important than her own well being – to both parties in the relationship.

But Fifty Shades is not simply problematic in its own right; what is frightening is what its roaring success says about our society. Its popularity Image: Noah Kiiiko as a text and a film is not just simply

down to titillating, kinky depictions of a BDSM relationship.

Its success with a female audience is perhaps due to James’s depiction of her protagonists: a dashing male hero, to be specific. In the wake of Fifty Shades of Grey, women the world over are swooning over James’s twodimensional portrayal of the ‘damaged’ man, Grey presumably too screwed-up to be capable of love, or at least too selfpitying and cowardly to be capable of letting love in. Grey is, in the eyes of a female audience, a damaged man to be healed – but only by the right girl. The result of this passionate entanglement is that domestic violence is excused, and even Grey’s suffering of child abuse is romanticised.

Fifty Shades of Grey has become so successful because our society is familiar and comfortable with the ageold dynamic of an innocent, unknowing woman, seduced by an excitingly dangerous man, for whom she puts her life and well being aside. Because that’s what women do for their men.

Fifty Shades is in itself harmless; it is its success which highlights disturbing attitudes in our society.

It is another manifestation of the ageold dynamic of ‘innocent woman seduced by handsome, dangerous man’

19 Febuary 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Comment 13 Self-care: Why the political is personal too Emily Mead Comment Contributor

S

FAB1

ince starting at Cambridge, I have lost the ability to take time off work. Though I do go to events and spend time with friends, there is never a time when I feel like I am genuinely taking a break from academia; it’s always on my mind. When one essay ends, the next one begins, and even during ‘vacation’, the burden of work looms. I have lost all concept of ‘weekend’. Recently I have started noticing the frequency of phrases like “I should be working right now” and “I don’t have time”. We have no work/relaxation time divide. There Image: Rdoke is always something more worthwhile to do; academic work is prioritised above other activities and looking after yourself, what we might call self-care, is a mere guilt-inducing luxury.

However, the problem does not end there. Getting over that first hurdle is hard enough, but after taking steps towards practising self-care, it is still all too common to feel that your selfcare itself is inadequate. A recurring topic in the Women’s Campaign’s conversations about self-care is the feelings of guilt associated with not doing it ‘properly’. We put ourselves under so much pressure to be as efficient as possible in all other areas of our lives that this attitude permeates our approach to self-care; in order to A ‘women’s make up for the guilt of spending time on ourselves, we attempt to make this only’ time as time efficient and productive as campaign humanly possible. This leaves us with insinuates only feeling more guilty when this is that women not the case. cannot This problem is central to the Cambridge modus operandi: ‘go hard understand or go home’.

Combined with the the world of drive and competitive spirit of most politics students, this place makes it difficult to enjoy things in a relaxed way. Looking to get involved in drama? Rehearsals

Labour’s patronising pinky premise?

Elsa Maishman Comment Contributor

A

ccording to Harriet Harman, it’s ‘magenta’. The Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, Gloria de Piero, called it ‘cerise’.

Let’s call a spade a spade, Labour’s new campaigning bus is pink.

The campaign involves several female Labour MPs touring the country in an attempt to ‘reach out’ to women, encourage them to vote, and avoid a repeat of the electoral gender gap in the 2010 General Election when 1 million more women than men didn’t turn up to the polls.

According to Harman, the aim is to “have a conversation about the kitchen table, and around the kitchen table.” To anyone concerned with the idea that the only place to find women is in the kitchen, be reassured; the bus is also targeting school gates and supermarkets.

Gloria de Piero claims to have no regrets about the colour of the bus because “everyone is talking about the issues that matter to women in a political context”.

Certainly the pink bus has caught media attention, but I don’t think that’s a reason to laud it. A google search of ‘Labour women’ now leads not to a page of news articles or infromation about Labour’s policies, but rather pieces on the colour of a particular campaign bus.

Pink is just a colour, but there is no getting around the fact that these days it’s associated with femininity. It marks the bus out as something feminine, and implies firstly that politics must be pretty-pink in order for women to take an interest, and secondly that women can relate only to a particular brand of politics aimed exclusively at them.

Just as classifying pink as feminine suggests that all other colours are not feminine, a ‘women’s only’ campaign insinuates that women cannot understand the world of mainstream politics, or indeed anything which isn’t presented to them in an attractive colour.

Leaving the pink atrocity to one side, there are a multitude of other problems with this campaign. Most obviously, its branding as ‘Woman To Woman.’

This suggests that all female voters want exactly the same thing, as if being female creates a homogeneity which transcends all other dividing factors.

How can Labour expect factors like age, race, income, sexuality and family situation to pale into insignificance in the face of gender?

Secondly, the idea behind the campaign is that female voters can only identify with female MPs. There are no men on Labour’s pink bus. And yet politics is overwhelmingly dominated by men.

Nearly 80% of MPs are male; if Harman is suggesting that men are incapable of representing women in government, then there is a bleak future for the female electorate.

Labour’s pink bus is undeniably a good publicity stunt. It has made female voters more visible and highlighted the polling day gender gap.

It enables Labour to shout ‘we’re listening to women.’ But plans have already been made, the manifesto has been written.

Instead of actually listening to what women want, engaging with them, and producing a manifesto from those conversations, Labour are instead desperately trying to convince women that the policies they have already made are female-friendly. In a pink bus.

all day every day before the opening night. Fancy doing a sport? Training, matches and fitness every day leading up to the big Varsity match. Therefore, it seems normal that anyone looking to take time out for themselves should feel the need to make it ridiculously productive. This past Week Five, I have found myself explaining the concept of crafts multiple times; you’d be surprised the number of people who struggle to grasp ‘the point’ of making pretty things unless you’re a world class artist. Being an amateur in Cambridge is treated with the same embarrassed sense of disgust as an ingrown toenail.

But self-care is a wonderfully radical and liberating act which defies the idea that we need to be ‘productive’ in order to be worthy. Sure, ‘the personal is political’, but this works both ways: the political is personal too.

Putting yourself first can be as much a rejection of the subjugations inherent in our institution as leading an activism campaign. I have recently taken to captioning pictures of cute animals with encouraging comments, with no immediate purpose whatsoever beyond making myself happy.

Although such acts do not seem inherently political, they express a defiant self-love which refuses to submit to the way women are socialised to feel inadequate and to place others’ needs first.

Of course, taking care of yourself also has positive effects on other people. Personally, I always feel better equipped to care for other people when I am not myself on the verge of breaking down. As Kendrick Lemar wisely asks, what’s love got to do with it when you can’t love yourself? But, in some ways, this is beside the point: self-care should be valued in and of itself, not as a means to be subordinated to a greater end.

Take (radical) care.

Image: Emily Mead

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Interviews

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‘I snogged 32 girls in Cindies’: Ollie Locke chats about ‘normal’ life Julius Haswell Interviews Editor

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llie Locke is a true gentleman.

Always polite, and incredibly humble, he is one of those people you know you won’t forget easily.

As soon as he walked into the room, he came straight up to me, shook my hand with a beaming smile, and said it was a pleasure to meet me. As an interviewer, it’s possibly one of the best starts you can have.

However, his early life you may not have seen coming. I asked him how he got the call for Made in Chelsea, and his answer caught me by surprise: “I was a cleaner in a bar on the King’s Road! I moved from Southampton to Chelsea and had lived there for five years. I in fact moved because I fell in love! I realised I needed money and went out clubbing a lot so the only job they had was as a cleaner, and so that’s how I got into promoting.

“Six years later I had become, dare I say it, a bit of a name, and that’s basically how it all started. I was the third person to sign the contract in October 2010.”

There is also possibly a darker side to MiC however, because the toll it can take on your life will affect you very deeply. “The hardest thing on MiC is

Paint me like one of your Chelsea boys the breakups, because they are as real as you could possibly imagine. There’s a lot of people saying it’s all fake and all scripted, but there’s 20 of us who know what it really means, and as someone who used to be on the show, I know how real it actually was. It is very claustrophobic and sometimes very difficult to trust anyone, but it was very hard at the time.”

In his talk, Ollie spoke about Cambridge being his second favourite city after London, and he explained just why our home from home is so great.

“I had the best year of my life here. When I was 18 I didn’t have

Image: LifeStyleYOU via YouTube

I was a cleaner in a bar on the King’s Road

any problems, and I could just have fun with my friends and not worry about anything. There was so much punting and cycling and stupidness. I was here just as the old Cambridge was still there.

“We kind of got integrated in a way by the undergraduates. They sort of took us under their wing and wanted to show us the experience that they’re having. It felt great because we were part of the elite society of Cambridge!”

Something we were really interested in was what Ollie made of the clubbing scene in Cambridge, which, as we all know, is second to none.

“I love ‘Life’ a lot. There used to be a gay night on Wednesdays and my friends and I used to go down there and laugh and have the most amazing time.

“I love Fez so much as well though, that’s my favourite in Cambridge.

Cindies is the one for pulling! That’s where I snogged 32 girls in one month!”

One thing Ollie has become famous for since MiC is his book, Laid in Chelsea. It climbed to number two in the reality show bestsellers list, and I asked him where he first got the idea for his fantastic book.

“I wrote a funny book about sex before MiC. Harper Collins approached me and said they wanted me to do the first MiC biography, but I was only 23 and I thought it was a bit stupid. But I wanted to show people about sex and real life.”

Made in Chelsea is so often seen as just a load of posh boys and girls badly acting out a script written for them by producers. However, it is much more than that.

The personalities featured in the show really do go through everything shown on television. All the breakups and the affairs, the kisses and the scandals, they are all true, and the issues really take their toll on those who go through it. It’s a very difficult life to lead and I for one see the show very differently now.

Dr Steve Peters – The psychologist who wins athletes olympic medals Julius Haswell Interviews Editor

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But he didn’t always work with sportsmen and women. His appointment as psychiatrist to the best sportsmen in the world came by chance: “It was completely accidental. One of my students graduated from Sheffield University and took a job at British Cycling. He felt there was a cyclist with a problem that he was out of depth with so he called me and asked me to work with him. So I went in and did this favour, and found that there was no mental illness, the cyclist just didn’t know how his mind was working. So

I showed him the model, and it went from there.”

He is in fact very grounded, as I found when I asked which sportsman he was most proud of: “There have been some cases very prominent in the public eye, but the successes I get are not always those. I love seeing people succeed, and if that is a national place of seventh even in Great Britain, and they feel that’s the pinnacle of their career because it’s the best they could have got, then for me to be part of that, it’s really satisfying and is for me a great success.”

ome say Steve Peters has been one of the best assets to British sport in a long time; indeed Dave Brailsford, mastermind behind the rise in British Cycling and Team Sky’s two consecutive Tour de France wins, said he was “the best appointment I ever made.” His model of using the analogy of a chimp to describe the brain is one used by many of the world’s top sportsmen to cope with stress in highperformance sport, so I asked him if he could explain it in very simple terms.

“It’s a way of trying to give people an accessible way of understanding what’s going on in their mind. In order to do that I created it as a model, so all I was saying is that you have two thinking operating systems in your brain, the human and the chimp. The chimp jumps to conclusions and makes people do things very quickly without thinking about it. The human is slower, but reacts based on facts not emotions; the human is far more rational, but the chimp reacts faster. It’s what makes us Even elite cyclists have a monkey in their brain make stupid split second decisions!”

Image: Matt Martin

I love gettting people to achieve their sporting pinnacle

His opinion on GB sport was very insightful as well, stating that the popularity and success of different sports fluctuates over the years depending on which medallists are on the team: “Each sport may have one or two medals at the olympics, so that will get a lot of attention. Over the years you’ll get high achievers in one or two sports, but then there’ll be no one there to follow it up. But then another event will come forward.”

He explained to me that all of the people that do work with him really want to do it: “The people who come to me are the people who want to understand, and so the things are all conceptual.

You get these lightbulb moments and then they move on when they learn the concepts. Often what I work on is just getting people to understand how they make decisions.”

Peters is a genius. He claims not to be a sports fan (he didn’t know who Ronnie O’Sullivan was), but he clearly understands how the complex mind of an athlete works.

His knowledge and hard work very much shows in the success Team GB had in the areas in which he worked.

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Dispatches 15 Wandering through Jerusalems: One ‘hundred gates’ of perspective Dorota Molin Year Abroad Columnist, Israel

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ne of the many things ‘Mea Shearim’ can mean is ‘one hundred gates’. According to a tradition, the number of original entrances into this neighbourhood was 100. Whether this is true or not, there certainly are at least 100 points of view from which you can

Windows to the soul

look at this Jerusalem neighbourhood.

As a resident of Mea Shearim, you could be a devout, ultra-orthodox Jewish woman. You are up at 6 a.m., because a family of 12 means a lot of work. When you’ve put on your wig or head-scarf (hair covered in public is required by the modesty law), you go outside for work, whilst your husband spends the whole day studying holy texts. But you won’t be a kvetsh

because every challenging practice has a deep religious meaning or a positive explanation, and obedience to it gives you a sense of fulfilment. You have many children, because life is a good gift from God which you want to share generously with many. And it is a privilege that your husband can be fully devoted to study, because God is infinitely great, and pondering his greatness can be equally infinite.

Or say you are a secular Israeli.

All your interactions with the ultraorthodox boil down to a street argument when you happen to pass by in a skirt too short for their liking.

That’s it. Your society and your state doesn’t exist for them. While you were serving the nation for two years in the army, they didn’t lift their eyes off the Talmud page. Or in fact – there is one case when they miraculously awaken to the existence of the state – when they request social benefits. By your judgement, the ultimate expression of hypocrisy and chutzpe is the poster on their wall. It depicts an ultra-orthodox soldier as a pig – the greatest offence to the army.

And finally – you can be me, a somewhat schmaltzy and naive tourist.

Image: Dorota Molin You will peep through the fence to see

Your society and your state doesn’t exist for them

children running about the ramshackle courtyard which is hemmed with endless lines of laundry. This is the mishpoche life. Finance is scarce, but the mishpoche will provide, whether for the Sabbath meal or for your son’s wedding. On the street corner, you will amuse yourself with posters spiced with some Yiddish – the now almost lost language of European Jewry. But as you chew on words like baleboste or schmooze, you will still feel the language’s seducing juiciness.

Then you will browse through some clothes shops: the endless rhythm of black and white where there are never ‘new arrivals’.

Life froze there, just like in the case of Eastern European Jews in the past, through reactionary conservatism.

This is the vicious cycle of the shtetl: the Jew is hated by the goy, so he withdraws to seclusion. But because of that, he will become even more different and even more.

So Mea Shearim can be seen as an anachronistic legacy of an age passed by, a unique museum of the shtetl. But is it just a poor, God-forsaken shtetl.

Because the stones that the children were jumping on can be thrown in the next moment on the police car.

I’m struggling

and I don’t know

WHERE to turn.

Drop in, call, or email…

19 February 2015 the cambridge student www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Features 16 Room ballots: The luck of the draw Catherine Maguire, Trinity Hall

Sam Rhodes, Gonville & Caius

Flora MacFarlane, Murray Edwards

There is little that could have ostensibly indicated to my first-year self that my home for the first year would prove to be – much like the rest of Cambridge – a hotbed of calamity.

I learned, the hard and frightfully smelling way, what a macerator did (or did not do). I memorised every word of Tom Jones’s Delilah, thanks to weekly drunken renditions by Cambridge’s finest inebriated talent on a Saturday night.

Most importantly, I quickly learned to never make the ding-dong-dash in your underwear from the shower to your room when the Dean’s room was located by the bathroom.

My first ballot, I ended up with a room with a view of King’s Parade and double glazing despite being half way down–I’m not sure I could have asked for anything more. My second ballot was even luckier, as I’d ended up with a mediocre room in a noisy staircase.

Over the summer though, the whole year got an email by a guy with a room at the top of a tower who was having double hip surgery and needed to swap to one with fewer stairs… a swift reply later and I get to spend third year in a palace looking out over the silence of Tree court.

It was a modern-day Christmas story: ‘there’s no room at the inn (college)’.

The four of us slowly walked away, dejected and forlorn. ‘Wait!’ she cried, ‘we might have something for you’. Lo and behold, we were offered a stable, usually inhabited by Erasmus students.

Fast forward a few months (note the absence of a baby) and here we are, living in a four-bedroomed house with a washing machine, freezer, kitchen, garden, living room and garage, boasting Aldi as our nearby neighbour. The only downside being that there’s also a really scary French neighbour who knocks on our door if we so much as laugh.

Other than that, a perfect entertaining house and an excellent retreat from daily life – we’ve lucked out.

Colm Murphy, Magdalene For this year, I was near the bottom of our random ballot. My claustrophobic room is situated directly above a noisy pub, which is frequently visited by a wellknown and raucous drinking society. My window, intended to protect me from the elements, is so precariously thin that it rattles whenever a bus happens to pass by – a regular occurrence. The ballot giveth and the ballot taketh away. On the plus side, I’m near the top for next year!

Will Amor, Year Abroad, Russia I’ve done my time. In second year, my room’s ceiling stopped a couple of inches above my head, and the floor was concave so attracted all the debris into a neat heap in the centre of the room. In third year, I’m living in a Communist tower block decorated in the traditional Soviet style (grey, beige and brown).

In fourth year, however, having fluked a First, I’m looking forward to an 18th century, four- room set. Who ever said that the only benefits of academic success were pride and a stellar career?

Sam Raby, Selwyn My ballot group was incredibly far down the list. Doomed to return to the first year court, all seemed lost, but we spotted a promising floor on which we took a punt.

The result was a massive kitchen, brand new rooms, and ensuites. Right in between the second and first years and £20 less per week than a lot of other rooms in college. Don’t give up hope!

In close proximity: surrounded by others Meggie Fairclough Features Contributor

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n the whole, I quite like people.

While I must admit that there is something satisfying in having ‘me’ time, like soaking in a hot bubble bath, there is also something equally comforting in having a gossip with your mates over a cup of tea and a good chick flick.

I think I’m rather good at sharing, and I will make a point of always halving the last Oreo cookie left in the packet, instead of stealthily stealing it under the cover of darkness.

For me, then, living in close proximity to others was not a daunting prospect. I found myself looking forward to splitting shopping lists and slogging through the work in a tight herd rather than as a lone wolf.

On the face of it when first arriving at Cambridge, it seemed that I would be living in a small police box designed to facilitate learning. A lot of students are crammed into the same box, and as a result will be living in each other’s

Cambridge living, it’s just like a Tardis really...

space– and treading on each other’s toes.

This can be good; friendships are made and developed, but when the milk goes missing or the alarm bleeps too loudly, tension rises and peaceful moods can change like the weather.

The way in which colleges are structured, making students live in this close proximity, does not create the ideal environment for work and academia, as there are endless distractions. Living on a corridor in college can at times feel more like living in a Tardis. It looks small on the outside, but inside there is so much going on that life becomes extremely hectic, and this close proximity brings with it endless distraction.

Saying that, during my second univesity term, I have discovered that it is indeed possible to live in close proximity and work well; you have to create a box within a box, a ‘hotspot’ that is completely closed off from the hustle and bustle lying only a few metres outside your door. By forming our own little worlds, we can live in close proximity, but still have enough room to Neighbours, always there... ‘grow’ and work on our own.

Image: Fran Hughes

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Features 17 The tyranny of room points Fran Hughes Features Contributor

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Image: Alex Brooks Shuttleworth

ention “room points” to most people in Peterhouse and you’ll probably be met with groans. Last year the JCR went through an extensive reassessment of the room points system. The result: almost nothing changed. We have always had a competitive system, where points are gained for academic performance and extracurricular activities. Pretty much the only difference now is that we can enter as groups. Hurrah! This means that the one friend who worked really hard to get a 2:ii now has to feel as if their score is ‘bringing down’ the position of the group.

The main argument for the system is that it encourages people in a small college to get involved in activities and keep societies running. But does it actually encourage people to achieve higher grades? I highly doubt it.

Perhaps the most irritating thing about the system is that it forces many students to care about something that we actually don’t give much of a damn about. All we really want is to live with friends in reasonably-priced accommodation.

When everyone else is stressing out about how many meaningless committeepositions they’ve filled that year, even the most anti-materialistic of us start to wonder if we want oak-panelling and a Life’s tough on the ballot drinks cabinet too.

Image: Sophie Buck

Communal living: The good, the bad and the ugly Natalia Rye Carriegas Features Contributor

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e’ve all been there: waking up with a raging hangover, craving desperately those few slices of toast with luscious butter, washed down with a steaming cup of coffee, only to find that you have no milk. Or no bread. Even the packet of butter labelled in big bold letters with your name has mysteriously shrunk.

What is a Cambridge undergrad meant to do? However, while there are no doubt disadvantages to living with a large group of people barely older than teenagers, the sense of community that you gain is priceless.

The Good There is something to be said about opening the ‘communal cupboard’ at 4 a.m. during an all-nighter and finding someone has very kindly stocked it up with sugary treats and delights. In fact, nothing beats having a cheeky biscuit or two without having paid for it. Same goes for wine. While you may not want to

uncork a second bottle, having someone else do so is totally fine. In these cases, the rule “you can have some of mine if you bring yours out” works wonders for the stingy students reluctant to volunteer more than their own fair share.

The Bad Unfortunately, it is inevitable that if you leave a packet of something open, in the fridge or somewhere visible, there is no question that there will be much less of it when you get back, if any at all. This is the mentality of cash-strapped students; anything that looks vaguely tempting and void of responsibility is thus free Fated to visit Sainsbury’s literally every time you do Image: Racchio game. We’re talking tubs of margarine, bread, cereal and especially milk. Not

Image: Nick Lee even threats of murder and assassination Sharing milk and teabags: the test of true friendship boldly proclaimed in permanent Sharpie pens deter the drunk and hungry student The out but not enough to make your tea would kill to be able to invest in a mini following a night out. milky. Or taking the entire packet of fridge of my own, I wouldn’t change it communal The Ugly biscuits back to your room, rather than for the world. There’s something special It is one thing to take a slither of cupboard: a just having a couple. However, nothing about living side by side with friends. butter every now and then for your post-Cindies is more awkward than sneakily taking Despite how much of a fuss I kick up morning toast but to take half and leave life saver someone else’s milk and having the when my emergency biscuits disappear, indentations of a fork is something else owner watch you do so from the door.

I miss the camaraderie when I’m back entirely. As is leaving a droplet of milk However much I complain about the at home with a fully stocked fridge, but left in the bottle, not quite worth tipping gyp rooms in our respective colleges and tragically neighbourless.

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Features 18 All Experiences Matter

Beat the boredom: Stay sane during lectures

Chris Page Columnist

. ven the most diligent student here can occasionally find their concentration waning during lectures. Never fear, however, because TCS has you covered with these tried and tested survival methods…

Abigail Smith Features Contributor

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Intermission: still degrading

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his is a question which should have a very simple answer. New research by this paper has shown that many of us in Cambridge have intermitted. The process should not be controversial, but a helpful and empowering means by which students with difficulties can take a break from their studies for the sake of their health.

I first found out about intermission (or “degrading” as it had been named, by someone who had the tact of a rolling pin) when a friend took time off for his mental health. I was shocked to discover that the reason he never visited was that he had been banned from being inside the city of Cambridge. Not our college, not the University; the city of Cambridge.

More specifically, everything within three miles of Great St Marys (as well as Girton).

I started digging into the “degrading” process a bit more. It was alarmingly common for colleges to make a condition of “degrading” that they left Cambridge completely. Visits could only be arranged several months in advance, with permission from a Senior Tutor, and were heavily policed.

So I started a CUSU-backed campaign called ‘Degrading is Degrading’, which resulted in an open letter with almost 2,000 signatures being presented to the Vice Chancellor. Over two years later, the University admitted that the term “degrading” was unfortunate, and that there was “no requirement” to live outside of Cambridge.

But this sadly didn’t improve things.

A close friend of mine was forced by her college to intermit, despite her doctor having written a letter which warned that intermission might have a negative impact on her mental health. The college simply dismissed the medical evidence because they didn’t agree with it.

A disclaimer that needs to be made at this point: perhaps this is not your experience. Perhaps you have intermitted and you received excellent support, you never felt pressured to leave when you did not want to, your college never stigmatised you.

I’m glad if that was your experience – that’s how it should be. But so much of one’s experience of welfare at Cambridge is dependent on luck, the quality of your tutor, or your college. There is a worrying lack of transparency and accountability in the intermission process. Research by this paper has called into question many of the claims made by the University about intermission. Something clearly isn’t right.

Your tea has gone cold, tragedy of all tragedies.

This requires immediate action

Subtle snacking One of the key weapons in your artillery, especially when the last minute dash to Sidgwick meant that breakfast did not happen. Coffee is naturally the first port of call, so get your flask at the ready (embrace looking like an idiot, as you will be the one who is warm and full of caffeine). You might even find yourself awake enough to listen. Snacks have to be subtle – don’t crack open a packet of crisps halfway through the speech of a softly-spoken lecturer. Aim to emulate those heroes who sit with what seems to be a full breakfast tray poised on their lap while simultaneously making notes.

Games Fierce games of subject-related hangman, disappointing games of Flappy Bird, and frankly dangerous rounds of thumb war; rope your friends into degree-failure with you as you pass the time reliving year seven. Classics, like noughts and crosses, are your best options, and also

He looks wide awake

Image: Moyen Brenn

can convince the short-sighted that you’re still making notes. Try not to get too competitive, as this may result in loud, attention-grabbing swearing.

Never ever Leave. This just tells everyone that you find the topic mind-numbingly dull, not least the lecturer themselves. If you feel like you could be using your time more Nap time productively elsewhere, do other work in Sometimes even the most valiant the lecture, so you maintain that studious attempts will fail, and you are forced aura; your half-arsed excuse of a dentist to admit defeat in the hard struggle to appointment will fool no one. prop open your eyelids. Try not to snore or drool, as this will not endear you to And Finally... your fellow lecture-goers, and will also The most important aspect of survival is alert the lecturer to the fact that you’ve subtlety; you aren’t there to start a riot been so utterly defeated. Your best bet is (though this would also cure boredom). to prop up an open book and hide your Work on perfecting your look of glazed shameful slumber behind it; just hope interest, and attempt to forget that the that your friends won’t leave you there lecture you’re ignoring will definitely when it’s over. come up in prelims.

Student Spotlight: Cambridge Eco Racing Lucy Stevens Features Contributor

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CUER aim to “inspire as well as innovate”

igh speed car races in the Outback and bloodthirsty levels of competition – perhaps not the kind of activities you would typically associate with our humble Engineering Department.

Cambridge University Eco Racing, founded in 2007, designs, builds and most importantly races solar powered vehicles. Corporate funding and sponsorship have enabled it to be the UK’s leading organisation in solar vehicle development. Members of CUER work on a wide variety of tasks, from the more obvious engineering and design side of things, to other aspects of the Society, like publicity and marketing.

CUER race in the World Solar Challenge, a solar endurance challenge held every two years in Australia. The aim of the race is to encourage and promote research into solar powered energy, exploring the option as an alternative to fossil fuels.

CUER have developed their vehicle to be raced in the 2015 World Solar Challenge with much more of a focus on aerodynamics than most other teams. Nyaa...

The car, called Eva, is therefore different: a smaller shape than many of its rivals.

Amira Damji, a first year engineer, spends between three and four hours a week on a computer in the engineering department working on the roof design of the car to be raced in 2017. Testing roof models in wind tunnels during these sessions, the aim is simply to see “How we could make it go faster during a race.” Ultimately, speed is key.

According to Amira, what makes CUER’s project “really challenging” is the fact that their model is completely original – so there is nothing to base the design on. This makes for an “exercise in problem solving”.

As well as racing in the World Solar Challenge, CUER aim to “inspire as well as innovate”, and as such the Society also undertakes a number of outreach programs, both in the UK and abroad.

Representatives can be seen at public events and showcases, attempting to promote the possibilities of solar energy.

Amira stressed that membership of CUER is “free and open to everyone”.

She continued: “We want to expand the diversity of our team. CUER is something that I’m passionate about, and Image: Susanne Nilsson proud to be part of.”

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Features 19 Crimewatch Cambridge: The day Disney stole my name Elsa Maishman Features Editor

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hen I was five years old my mother introduced me to a stranger, who said “Elsa?

That’s a pretty name.” Ever since that moment, I knew I was special.

Wherever I went, my name was greeted with surprise and awe. It was perfect – short, easy to pronounce, easy to spell, and yet unusual. I never knew anyone else called Elsa, and in school I got to feel that special sense of selfimportance granted to people like Madonna and Beyoncé.

But then, just over a year ago, disaster struck. Nobody warned me. Nobody thought to get in contact and say ‘hey Elsa, we’re going to have a drastic impact on your life. Sincerely, Disney.’

Instead, I sat down one afternoon to watch Frozen with my brother (who had already seen it, and didn’t warn me) blissfully oblivious to the tremors about to shake me to my very core.

The opening shots of the film were promising: I like mystical northern music and cheesy cartoons as much as the next person. And then suddenly, out of the blue, that overly-cute little red-headed girl (with a perfectly normal name) said two words that were to change my life

Guy Lewy Columnist A side street wormhole

My name never bothered me anyway

Image:Disney UK via YouTube

forever: “Pssst... Elsa?”

That was it. From that moment onwards, life was different. For one thing I couldn’t enjoy the film, as I’m not used to being with other Elsas so I assume all usage of the name refers to me. But more importantly, everyone I meet now feels the need to clarify that my name is Elsa ‘like from Frozen?’ Luckily my death stare is usually enough to convince them that the name belonged to me 18 years before the film came out. Unfortunately I’ve had no financial remuneration whatsoever, but if I did have a pound for every time I’ve been asked if I want to build a snowman I’d be able to drop out

of Cambridge and retire to my ice castle and sassy power ballads.

None of my friends called Anna have been affected in this way. Perhaps this is due to the fact that from Notting Hill to Anna Karenina, all eight of them are probably used to this sort of namesullying. My name used to be different, it used to be special.

But now I’ll be compared to a Disney Princess for the rest of my life, and in five years time schools will be overrun with little Elsas, devaluing a name that was once unique.

But, yes I know, I know, I really need to let it go.

The two words which were to change my life forever: ‘psst...Elsa’

Save the date: An alternative calendar Elsa Maishman Features Editor

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alentine's Day and Pancake Day are fading into distant memory.

The Cambridge Student is here to give you a run down of the slightly more obscure commemorative holidays coming up this term.

18 February: Drink Wine Day This one's already gone by. Oh well, it can never be too late to catch up.

Cambridge Curiosity Cabinet

Pandora, Rupert or Bruschetta, the more 19 March: Chocolate Caramel Day middle class the better.

Be sure to celebrate with a box of Sainsbury's own millionaire shortbread.

9 March: Napping Day This is perhaps our favourite one. A 20 March: Snowman Burning Day legitimate excuse as to why your essay Yep. It's definitely a real thing. will be handed in late.

27 March: Quirky Country Music Song 10 March: Fill Our Staplers Day Titles Day Run to Ryman, wander to WH Smith You can all now rest easy, safe in the or saunter optimistically over to knowledge that this important day has Sainsbury’s. It’s an important one, this. been duly commemorated.

2 March: Old Stuff Day From childhood toys to mortifying family photos to grey-haired professors, today is the day for celebrating all things aged.

3 March: What If Cats And Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs? Day Just think about it...

5 March: Absinthe Day It may taste like paint stripper, but apparently it's a hallucinogenic. Fun. 6 March: Middle Name Pride Day Extra points to anyone with more than three. Celebrate them all: Horatio, International celebrate cute hedgehog-snowpeople day

Photo: tanakawho

What if cats and dogs had opposable thumbs?

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enate House Passage is a gem of a walkway, with so much drama in its crumbling walls and telescopic length that however much you’re being squeezed by the tourists with their bridge cameras and the bikers weaving uneasily on and off the cobblestones, something will catch your eye.

Walking from the direction of King’s Parade, you can peek to your left through the vertical bars of John Soane’s organically curved fenceposts; between them you see that the gleaming white stone of the Old Schools Building is nothing more than a thin facade.

From behind this clean Georgian skin stares furtively, from a small corner, a gritty browned Gothic surprise which is part of the oldest university building in the city.

Before you move you feel to your right Caius’ Gate of Honour pressing down on you. This little parody of a triumphal arch, with its sundials and overconfident flourishes, can only be walked through by Caius students on their way to The Senate House on graduation.

There is one really remarkable thing about the whole path. It’s not that it’s the only street in Cambridge to use every type of building stone in the area (I know what you’re thinking, but there’s even sandstone in the Caius library wall). It’s that Senate House Passage is an optical illusion. If you’re ever there after sunrise but before the world arrives, stop for a minute at the mouth of the path. Decide how far away that Narnian lamppost at the far end is; how many times your height is the distance, and how many metres? Walk down the slight hill, past the Gate of Honour, past the little weeds growing from the crack where wall meets floor, and notice that the path is growing surreptitiously wider and wider. When you get to the end, by Tit Hall and the lamppost, turn around and ask yourself the same question. The occasional cyclist biking past on King’s Parade now feels like just a speck on the horizon because of the weird trick of forced perspective that the quietly narrowing path plays on your brain. Senate House Passage is one of my favourite streets because for all the grandeur on each side, it sits unpretentiously like a peacock’s bottom surrounded by its tail. Just a pretty passage with a fun little trick.

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Cartoon 20

Cartoon by Miranda Gabbott

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Games & Technology

21

World of Warcraft: is it all you think it is?

Alex McLaren Games and Tech Contributor

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beginning and in theory, at least) you were supposed to play in character (IC), and more or less according to the official ‘lore’ (the canon of the Warcraft series) with the intended effect being that the whole thing resembled an ongoing collective improvisation on a massive scale. Although some players of course didn’t take this entirely to heart, the RP was an important part of the experience for us.

Of course, we weren’t IC all the time, and spent most of our time out

of character (OOC) in private chat channels. We’d also chat OOC while we were RPing in the public channels.

Enduring friendships were established.

What seems to baffle people who have never made a friend they’ve never met is that those friendships can be as real and engaging, and emotionally satisfying – and potentially damaging, when they go wrong – as any made face-to-face.

When you say this, people may assume that you’ve never had a ‘real’ friend to compare it to. They could be forgiven

he public conviction that WoW – and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) in general – are a compulsive habit, to be guiltily satisfied or resisted and overcome, I think, stems from an anxiety and lack of understanding about new forms of sociality. People in general, but especially non-gamers can’t seem to fathom that playing a game can be a social activity.

Thankfully, increasingly few think like this, as the current generation has grown up around gaming. The popular image, which you hear spouted on the old (dying and obsolete) media – that is television, radio, the newspapers – of basement isolation is a myth, more apt to describe the average gamer back in the days when the hobbyists reigned, when owning a computer was odd and somewhat suspect. Of course, it was a gross generalisation even then. For everyone I was close to in WoW, the solo experience of the game was, at best, a way to pass the time; at worst, utterly joyless. The thing that kept me – and all of us – coming back was the community around the game.

I played on a roleplaying (RP) server.

To clarify, that means that (in the This dragon’s only half the story belive it or not.

I have a friend in Norway – I’m his best man now, though I’d never met him in person

Foeoc Kann via Flickr

for holding this assumption, I suppose: if you’re not used to communicating in text, and in real time, you probably can’t imagine the nuance of personality and idiosyncrasy that can be expressed by people to whom it comes naturally. I have a friend in Norway – I’m his best man now, though I’d never met him in person – whom I’ve been speaking to for almost 10 years.

We have our own little idiolect. The same is true of all the people I’ve known well online, including two boyfriends, one of them current, who visits every summer: much as your voice and your general comportment subtly change depending on your company, you tend to adopt a certain idiom of (textual) speech with your online friends. In the absence of body language, without facial expression, you figure out how to make writing do the same work.

If there’s anything compulsive about MMOs, it’s definitely the relationships above anything else. There are better (and much more addictive) single-player games out there, and thousands of them.

But for me, at least, the gameplay has never been the focus; but rather who I’ve been sharing it with. I have made friends through WoW, who have lived all over Europe, whom I’d known for years and whom I’d abandon no sooner than the ones I’d met in person.

Channel your boredom: Procrastination, YouTube-style Aislinn Mc Donagh Games and Tech Contributor

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he invariable tedium and difficulty of tripos work leads to another inevitability: that of procrastination. Yet even this can an exercise in dreary routine if it’s just the same Facebook-news-Facebook routine over and over again. The Cambridge Student urges you to look instead to YouTube, a near limitless source of distraction, here are four channels to check out on those days when only distraction will do.

Mike Falzone Comedian, musician, and apparent guru Mike Falzone makes super short (two to four minute) videos which range from observational comedy stand up, rant series such as ‘Real things I’ve heard people say this week’ and ‘Hey. Shh. Don’t’ and advice videos, typically taken answering questions from his Tumblr ask box. These last ones are much funnier, more sensible and more uplifting than you expect. See ‘Baby talking couples’ and ‘Put yourself out there’. His channel

PBS Idea Channel With titles such as ‘Is buying Call of Duty a moral choice?’, ‘Does nail art show that anything can be a canvas?’ and ‘Is piracy helping Game of Thrones?’ among over 100 others, this channel is every semi-intellectual discussion you’ve had in the college bar, but better researched and with gifs. The episodes are typically four to eight minutes long, and are a nice way to pretend you’re stimulating your brain between watching cat videos (though they have a video about those too…)

PBS: Much more than just a tripos.

contains short, happy pick me ups for when you’re still in the library at 10 p.m. at night or when you’re still in bed at 12 p.m., lounging around and scrolling through BuzzFeed.

Screen Junkies If you watch YouTube videos, you’ve probably come across this channel in some capacity, because these are the guys who make the ‘Honest Trailers’ series.

This are some of the funniest and most moreish videos on YouTube, poking fun

of everything from the abominable to the super popular. However, you might not know that they now do a weekly panel show called ‘Movie Fights’, which is about an hour, where they have a competitive debate on 8-10 topics per week, with everything from serious film buff questions like ‘Best Tarantino Movie’ to the less serious ‘Best Use of Product Placement in a Film’. The shows are funny, interesting, and thoroughly beautiful nerd experiences.

Pemberly Digital Don’t have time to watch TV? Sick of arts students being shocked you’ve not got round to reading Austen? Look no further! Pemberly Digital is a channel set up after the success of the Emmy Award-Winning ‘The Lizzie Bennett Diaries’, and shows series of vlog-style adaptations of classic novels. So far they have covered Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Frankenstein and are currently adapting Little Women. The individual episodes are usually five minutes long, and are a palatable morsel of culture for when you are snowed under with essays and just can’t be bothered to slog away Photo: Mike Licht via Flickr at the Dickens.

The shows are funny, interesting, and thoroughly beautiful nerd experiences

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

TV & Film

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

22

The Bechdel test: Sadly still useful, 30 years later Grace Murray TV & Film Editor

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he Bechdel test is not particularly complicated. A film must meet three requirements to pass: it has to have at least two women in it, who talk to each other, about something which isn’t men. If you’re feeling really daring, you can insist that the women are named. It’s with this criteria that half of the current crop of Best Picture nominees fail the test.

Whiplash, American Sniper, The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Imitation Game centre on male relationships into which women occasionally intrude.

Birdman and The Theory of Everything scrape a pass, labelled as ‘dubious’ and surrounded by ongoing debate on the Bechdel website. Only Selma and Boyhood pass the test in both its forms, which leaves us with sadly limited female representation amongst the best films of 2015.

Created in 1985, the Bechdel test is still going strong, but its limitations have been pointed out over the years. A film might pass the test and still be sexist in its content. Examples include The Wolf of Wall Street, in which the portrayal of women is filtered through the lens of the chauvinistic salesmen led by Leonardo DiCaprio. The film implicitly critiques his views, but its female characters are

hardly three-dimensional, and yet it achieves a pass. Even stranger is Love Actually, which manages a pass on the basis of a conversation between a little girl and her mother about the school nativity play, which lasts for 30 seconds.

This, then, is the only conversation between two female characters which does not involve men in the entire film – surprising for a film with such wellrespected female actresses.

On the other hand, a film might fail, but isn’t automatically misogynist – The Theory of Everything is, after all, about the relationship between a man and a woman, whose stories are given equal weight. 2013 nominee Life of Pi also fails for somewhat obvious reasons, since most of it takes place on a lifeboat with a tiger.

There are, of course, the films which confirm expectations: the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, though Oscarnominated, only ticks the box for named female characters. None of them interact. Does this failure automatically mean that the three original films are fundamentally flawed? Surely the point of the Bechdel test is not to make fans feel guilty for enjoying individual films which have failed?

The test works best and least controversially in identifying the general trend, and this suggests that Oscar picks regularly don’t measure up to the

Bechdel’s pretty minimal requirements.

From 2004 to 2014, six Best Picture winners pass the test – although two, The King’s Speech and No Country for Old Men, are dubious – and four fail, according to the Bechdel site. Since 2010 and the introduction of the larger nominee list, 23 out of 55 nominees have failed the test.

The questions this raises, and the next step that the film industry should take, have cropped up in Oscars coverage throughout the last few years, and they’re coming up again as we near the big day. It’s clear that we’ve yet to come up with an answer.

Should Hollywood respond directly, and engineer its films to pass the Bechdel test? Nobody wants to see two female characters speak to each other about the weather and disappear again (and it’s by this means that several blockbusters sneak in a pass), but is that preferable to their absence entirely? Presumably if screenwriters include more rounded female characters, they will necessarily converse about topics other than men, but the absence of these characters shows that there is still a long way to go.

The Bechdel test diagnoses a symptom of a much larger problem of female representation in Hollywood. It may be turning 30 years old, but – unfortunately – we’re still waiting for the film industry to render it obsolete.

‘Boyhood’ defies its title to pass

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‘Take Me Out’ is surprisingly fun Lottie Limb TV & Film Contributor

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or those of you not familiar with the televisual triumph that is Take Me Out, the premise is simple: single men prance about a bit to impress 30 women and take one out on a date. So quite like Blind Date, but with 10 times the girls and 100% less creepy Cilla.

It’s been around for five years now, and never used to be my cup of tea.

But on a recent weekend home I found myself entangled on the sofa with my best friend in front of ITV’s Saturday primetime for the first time in years.

And sure, it is a lowbrow show – crammed with cheesy catchphrases,

innuendos, audience ‘ooo’s and ‘aaa’s, and people generally hamming it up. But it’s also very, very watchable.

For instance, there has been a magical love saga between Looci and Nick this season, which was unbelievable. The pair are exes of two and a half years who, by complete chance, meet again on the show. She leaves her light on, then he picks her, and off they fly together to the Isle of… Fernando’s!

It doesn’t work out, again. “Lights out, all out!” as Paddy’s concluding catchphrase goes. I’d call Take Me Out a guilty pleasure, but I’m with Dave Grohl on those: “You should be able to like what you like.” And it looks like Take Me Out has gained one more completely unrepentant fan.

The opening wishes it was ‘The X Factor’

Photo: Take Me Out UK

> Fifty Shades of Grey Grace Dickinson

r Grey will see you now, in one of the most hotly anticipated films of the year that will leave you feeling as cold as the handcuffs in his drawer.

Fifty Shades of Grey could have easily fallen into the realm of R-rated soft porn, but with Sam Taylor-Johnson at the helm, the sex scenes are rather tastefully portrayed. They’re also as sterile as Christian’s dry-cleaned suits.

The on-screen chemistry between Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan is unconvincing and practically nonexistent, much like the plot.

Surprisingly it wasn’t the soundtrack, and not the sex, which reduced me to cringe-induced laughter. In Beyonce’s

Photo: Universal UK

‘Haunted’, the lyric “My wicked tongue, where will it be?” was answered by what transpires on screen. The ‘Crazy in Love’ remix plays as the pair use the Red Room of Pain for the first time. “Uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh, oh no no” indeed…

But the unintentional comedy does not distract from Christian’s abusive, controlling nature, which goes beyond the boundaries of a consensual relationship.

Anastasia falls for and changes herself to please a rich, handsome businessman, only to be physically punished in the film’s chilling climax for desiring some level of intimacy.

In all, the film stays true to its title. It’s 50 shades of dull sex, dreary plot and murky characterisation.

4/10

The patented Edward Cullen stare of creepy love

Photo: Universal Pictures

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Theatre

23

‘The Weir’

Politics and the theatre: Athol Fugard’s Playland

Bea Lundy Theatre Reviewer

Harry Parker Theatre Editor

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he stage is set as a friendly pub; the audience can actually buy drinks from the landlord, Brendan, played by Bret Cameron, behind the bar, which makes the already welcoming set feel still more like a local establishment. The cosy shabbiness of the furniture and the small space combine to create a sense of ease among the audience, a sense that we know the characters and that they are our friends. This is expert stage management

by Lili Scott Lintott.

Nevertheless, the play itself has two sides. Written in 1997, the playwright Conor McPherson clearly intended the audience to feel at ease, with the traditional Irish joviality attributed to publicans causing the audience to sometimes laugh. However, as the characters slowly reveal more of their history and relationships the plot and tone become more sinister. The Weir follows four landlords and a visitor, Valerie, who, during a dark, windy night, try to scare one another with stories of ghosts and fairies. The feeling the audience leaves with at the end, though, is rather more serious than the fanciful tales told. Indeed, the occasionally funny interjections of Jim, Tom Ingham, seem unintentional, and if they were laughed at there is a marked sense among the audience that it laughs because it wants desperately to cling to the light comedy and fun for which the stage and characters are set up.

The four landlords were mostly well performed, with exceptional portrayals from Harrison MacNeill as Jack, a brash and quick-witted heavy drinker, and Tom Taplin as Finbar. While the Irish accents apparently required of the actors sometimes slip, these two uphold for the most part a reality which draws in the audience. Once you get past the others’ accents it is easy to become sucked into the more intricate parts of the characters.

Similarly, the occasional awkwardly long pauses are noticeably distinguishable from the meaningfully suspenseful gaps, and the overall performance could be tightened. Nevertheless, Greg Forrest’s direction is impressive, retaining the focus of the audience consistently throughout the production despite minimal movement, and the character monologues are generally compelling and suspenseful.

However the most impressive feat was the balance between the almost forced cheeriness and the desperation most of the characters feel. Finbar’s claim that you can “hear a load of ol’ shit around here. It doesn’t mean anything”, rings hollow. This ‘shit’ is entertaining, if a little unexpected.

thol Fugard’s Playland is a show which has recently fallen out of favour in contemporary theatrical circles. Without a professional production for several years now, it is one of Fugard’s most directly political plays and deals with intolerance and political extremism in post-apartheid South Africa. Ahead of Playland’s run at the Mumford Theatre, I spoke to director Jack McNamara, about why he feels now is the best time for a comeback.

How did the idea to stage ‘Playland’ come about?

When I studied drama at university the focus was so much on British theatre, so discovering Fugard was an amazing breath of fresh air. The spirit, style and energy of it was so un-British, and that really appealed to me.

Even as a white African, you can sense his deep connection with the country and people. I always imagined the plays being staged with a kind of charged, dusty quality; the way I imagined those early Market Theatre productions would have been. I spotted Playland at a second hand bookstore shortly after getting the job running a British touring company and knew this was one I wanted to do.

It boiled down all of Fugard’s major themes to one essential conflict between black and white. It had also somehow managed to slip the radar so there had never been a regional production as far as we could tell, so it felt valid to share it with our audiences.

You’ve talked about how putting on the play now is especially important in the run-up to the general election. What do you think staging ‘Playland’ can contribute to the debate?

I just think we have to take care of our society and the different elements that make it up. People can fall into some unhealthy ways of talking and thinking about foreigners and otherness, and politicians end up playing on this for support. Apartheid was put into place by educated, cultured, family-orientated Europeans, not ogres. And now organisations like UKIP have hatred and intolerance at the centre of their thinking but dress it up as a kind of responsible cultural cleanup.

I am not using Playland to contribute to a debate but I would like it to show people an extreme state of affairs that is not miles away from us either culturally or ideologically. And if it makes just one person think twice about supporting UKIP I’ll be very happy.

A lot of ‘Playland’ revolves around very specific moments in South African history. Is there a danger some of it might be lost on a 21st-century British audience?

The conflict presented in the play is generally universal – it’s about society’s outcasts and people with demons. But an understanding of what happened in South Africa over that time wouldn’t hurt. I think it’s important that there is a wide awareness of what happened, and if someone comes to the play not knowing that South Africa was brutally divided for 50 years then I hope the play prods them to look into that. It was only

Image: Pamela Raith Photography 20 years ago, so it shouldn’t quite be disappearing into the past yet.

In terms of the references to SWAPO, that is a rather specific conflict that I don’t imagine all audiences will be familiar with. But I have added a programme note about it and hopefully the action is arranged in such a way that people get the emotional sense of it, if not the historical.

Apartheid was put into place by cultured, educated, family-oriented Europeans, not ogres Finally, what can we expect from ‘Playland’?

It’s a harrowing story performed by two incredible actors on a very brutal looking set made of metal and concrete. At times its painful but also funny and energetic.

Given the economy of it all, just two actors in one setting, I would say its a pretty rich evening.

Review: ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore Sarah-Jane Tollan Theatre Reviewer

Image: J Hjorth

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moke drifts across the stage, cigarettes are lit up and puffed nonchalantly as red-stained lips sip from clear glasses. The band – a magnificent four piece located at the top of the set – smoothly play

jazz as, like gods on a kind of warped Mount Olympus, they look down upon the mingling characters, awaiting the deception, lust and revenge that is to stain the stage.

The innovative staging is intelligent, adding freshness and vivacity to a source material that has been much recycled.

Her interpretation of John Ford’s play transports the cast away from 17thcentury Parma to 1928, where proud matriarch Florio (originally a patriarch in Ford, played by Emma BlacklayPiech) juggles running her clandestine speakeasy with finding a husband for her daughter Annabella, a crimson-lipped siren who has a cacophony of suitors, not least her own brother, Giovanni (Tom Chamberlain). Both Kass and Chamberlain give convincing individual performances of the Fordian starcrossed lovers, although at times their chemistry struggles to reach the same

crystalline high notes of Kass’ beautiful singing voice.

However, their unnecessarily long simulated sex scene to ‘It Had to be You’ brought to the forefront the meekness and disharmony in their acting relationship, uncomfortable to watch not due to its depiction of incest, but due to the barrenness of their passion.

If it were not for the supporting cast, perhaps the empty passion between the two leads would have been to the detriment of the production. Jack Parham and Rose Reade excel in their comedic roles, injecting the production with energy and excitement every time they appear on stage.

At risk in certain moments of being more pomp than substance, Tis Pity manages to entertain succinctly rather than thematically, albeit luring you in with its smoky, laughing hedonism all the same.

‘Tis Pity manages to entertain succintly, luring you in with its smoky, laughing hedonism

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

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Music 24 A Disney life Kate Ellison Music Contributor

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lopping onto my bed, I let my pile of books tumble onto the floor. Surely it wasn’t always this hard? I plug in my iPod and hit shuffle; nostalgia strikes, like the bullet that traumatised a cinema of five-year-old Bambi lovers and it all comes rushing back. Oh no, this is the Disney playlist!

I remember how I was wondering, “when will my life begin”, and how I ‘just couldn’t wait’ to be Caian. I knew it would be hard work, but “heigh ho”, I’d done A-levels and I thought I could “go the distance”. But now, surrounded on the one side by the “twitterpated”

Personal Playlist: Songs I want played at my funeral is ultimately futile “we’re on a road to nowhere”, while the religious in the room can cheer themselves with the line “we’re on the road to paradise”.

Ellie Coote Music Contributor

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he last few days have been spent envisaging my own funeral, in a slightly twisted turn of events. As I scrolled through old playlists and albums I felt like I was carving out the years of my life – moving through indie ghost towns, passing 60s-nostalgia lane and ending up somewhere in ambient alley. Of course, choosing your own funeral playlist is mostly about maximising the sadness of others, ergo: which artists best complement an undertone of muffled sobs? Family and friends, take note.

They’ll miss me more when they’re reminded how funny I am

‘Road to Nowhere’ – Talking Heads This one is a collective tearjerker until the drums kick in; then it’s just loud enough to conceal embarrassing sniffs.

The lyrics supply sufficient consolatory language: “It’s alright, baby, it’s alright.”

Appealing to the masses, David Byrne reminds us that life has no direction and

‘Light My Fire’ – The Doors It’s hard to resist a little deadpan irony: Jim Morrison repeating, “come on, baby, light my fire” whilst my relatives Image: Wonk... gather around an incinerator. You’re welcome. Plus, it would be hard for anyone not to sway or tap along to a raucous laughter. They’ll miss me all fusion of psychedelic blues-rock. the more when they’re reminded of how funny I am.

‘Stop Your Sobbing’ – The Kinks Before my first birthday I’d only ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ – Bob Dylan repeated the syllable la-la-la-la over During the last few days, I’ve and over again. My parents were developed a romantic idea of my ashes devastated; that is until I broke out into blowin’ away across some vaguely a full rendition of Lola. I’d really been emotionally significant field to the tune bottling that up. This jaunty number of a harmonica. I’ll flutter off over provides the perfect juxtaposition to the trees, serenaded by a Bob Dylan grief. “It is time for you to stop all of impersonator who can barely enunciate your sobbing.” I’d like to think that as he balances a cigarette between his after a smattering of chuckles from a lips, and then attempts to sell his homefew unwitting mouths, the congregation recorded CD to my grieving relatives. would burst out into uncontrollable Ah, pathos.

Gigs and gowns: Can you handle The Handlers?

Tom Ronan Music Editor

college couples and on the other by those “poor unfortunate souls” in their essay crises, part of me wishes for a fairy godmother to “bibbidi bobbidi boo” it all away – it was all just something I hadn’t seen coming “around the river-bend”. But then I listen again.

I’d chosen a degree quite definitely “worth fighting for” and it was about time to “be a man” and stop “worrying they’d see right through me”. Whether it’s making yet another trip to Sainsbury’s for the “Bare Necessities”, finding a “beast” to dance

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he Handlers are perhaps the most versatile cover band in Cambridge, intent on getting their audience to “dance, boogie and sing along to ‘Hey Jude’ for 25 minutes at 3 a.m.”.

It’s no surprise that they find themselves in high demand, claiming to have had “more gigs than hours’ sleep” over the course of May Week last year.

I caught up with a few members of their sizeable entourage before they played

two sets at Churchill Spring Ball.

As with all their gigs, they had very little planned, relying instead on audience suggestions. This gives their shows incredible spontaneity: “At MedSoc Ball we were meant to be doing a background Jazz set, but people kept shouting out suggestions so it became a Michael Jackson, Beatles, Bar Mitzvah-style disco.”

So how do the band manage such versatility? It’s made possible in part by the fact that the band members are talented musicians individually.

with to Cindies’ Disney remixes, or just simply enjoying this “whole new world”. Happily ever after might not be as straightforward as it was made out to be, but we’ve got to “let it go” and rock out to ‘Hakuna Matata’.

Images: Pablo Zapata Franco, lambiase1, wetrzwqgrh The Handlers: Coming to a student event near you

“There are two organ scholars and everyone except Cameron and Omar are choral scholars”, which means that they are adept at picking up new or unfamiliar songs, often with no prior practice; “The process of rehearsal takes place during gigs.”

By playing together repeatedly, they have developed such an outstanding rapport that they don’t need to “mention, signal, or even make eye contact” during a song to segue into a new piece. As one member remarks, “you can just change song and you’ll know that the other seven or eight members of the band will go along with it immediately.”

May Week 2015 looks to be just as busy as the last, since the band have “at least one gig confirmed for every night”. I ask if the hectic schedule can get in the way of their social life in May Week, but it doesn’t sound likely given that “the mantra of the band is that we sound terrible sober.”

While the endless string of shows can be “incredibly stressful,” admits one band member, “They are also really, really good fun.”

Make sure you catch The Handlers over the next few months if you’re looking to join the fun, and be sure to wear your dancing shoes.

The Handlers will be performing at Trinity May Ball, Clare May Ball, Emma May Ball, Magdalene May Ball, Darwin May Ball, and King’s Affair Image: James Pearson amongst other student events.

It became a Michael Jackson, Beatles, Bar Mitzvah-style disco

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Books 25 Exploring a warren of bookstores in Cambridge Alice Mottram Books Editor

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hether you are hunting down your tripos reading list, or idling away a day dreaming about all the books you wish you had time to read, Cambridge has enough bookstores to please every type.

The most competetive stores in town are probably Heffers and Waterstones, offering similar selections of stationary and gifts. Cambridge also hosts several independent booksellers, creating a rich offering for all students.

Value: The only copy of Pride and Prejudice for sale costs an extortionate £15.99, and considering that many of the other texts on sale are available to Cambridge students in libraries or online, it does not seem warranted. However, the 20% discount to University card holders might sway the desperate shopper.

Stationary: Refill paper emblazoned with the University of Cambridge logo in proud Cambridge blue costs an outrageous and pretentious £3.50.

Chairs: The lack of chairs and the classical music combine to create an atmosphere which could scare away even the most determined shopper.

Experience: 4/10. An uncomfortable and emotionally stifling experience.

G. David Booksellers

Heffers Range: You can always find what you’re looking for on the Academic shelves.

Jane Austen’s six classic novels are available in over 14 different editions, from the standard black jacket Penguin, through American imports, to beautifully presented collectors’ editions. The basement houses second hand books, which are comprehensive and erudite.

Value: Copies of the ever popular Pride and Prejudice cost between £5-£15.

Music: The basement music department is comprehensive, stocking CDs and sheet music. Classical strains drift up throughout the store, setting the tone for the perfect shopping experience.

Stationary: An excellent range of Moleskins, puzzles and surprisingly decent literary t-shirts, but the pricing is steep.

Chairs: Situated by office desks, so sitting down to contemplate the beauty of the bookstore feels worryingly like being interviewed for a job.

Experience: 8/10. More chairs and less classical music would make Heffers the perfect bookshop.

CUP Bookshop

Range: The academic volumes, fresh off the press, look like textbooks. The arrangement in the window of Plato and Kierkergaard serves to warn away the idle browser.

Penguin at 80

Waterstones Range: In fierce competition with Heffers, it may not be as erudite but there is something for everyone on the miles of shelves across four floors. Causing mass confusion, the sections ‘fiction’, ‘classics’ and ‘hardback classics’ are separated.

Value: In comparison to the 14 editions at Heffers, Waterstones stocked a comparatively disappointing seven editions of Austen novels, primarily the standard Penguin and Oxford copies.

Pride and Prejudice retails from £2.50.

Coffee: The coffee shop on the second floor is busily selling lattes for £2.35, but sadly lacks sandwiches.

Music: Above the sounds of shopper friendly classical music is the overwhelming sound of small children.

Stationary: A similar selection to that of Heffers, but with excessive Orla Kiely tins and textiles.

Chairs: Leather armchairs abound; at last a bookstore which has realised the importance of letting shoppers sit down.

Experience: 7/10. Reasonably pleasant, but ultimately a soulless chain.

Range: Vast in scope, but by no means exhaustive, there is however an outstanding antiquarian section.

Stocking very early prints and maps in addition to first editions of fiction, these shelves provide splendid browsing.

Value: Stocking new and second hand books on the same shelves, Pride and Prejudice retails from a generous £2.

Coffee: The proximity of the shop to The Indigo Café is a godsend; the range of teas and hearty soups can warm every rainy day.

Chairs: There is no room for chairs in this warren, in which books line shelves and ground space. The tiny rooms are a treasure trove to explore on a lazy day.

Experience: 7/10. Whilst you might not Oxfam Books find the titles on your syllabus, you will come away having found any number of Range: Stocking not just books but little gems. vinyl and Fairtrade chocolate, it is an ambitious range. It is enlightening to The Haunted Bookshop explore the donations from Cambridge residents, with a highly respectable computing and statistics section.

Value: Despite there being only two Austen titles on the shelves, the reserves reveal more than is displayed on the shop floor. Pride and Prejudice in the current Penguin black jacket costs just £2.99, with a gift-aid option. However, the ‘Lizzie McGuire’ box set is a luxury purchase at a pricey £8.99.

Coffee: Sustenance is at hand, with On the opposite side of the square to Costa close by.

G. David, this store really is close to Experience: 6/10. You might not find Indigo Café. Tiny and lacking any everything you need, but at their slim obvious organisation, it perhaps suits prices and charitable proceeds, picking the forager but not the driven student up a treat is always affordable. with a reading list to hunt down.

If there were any copies of Pride and Prejudice, they were evasive.

That said, the shelves were lined with interesting second hand volumes, such as charming children’s books with vintage appeal.

Experience: 4/10. Only for the student with time on their hands.

Otherwise grab your coffee and keep Images: Alice Mottram on walking.

Alice Mottram Books Editor

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s a special celebration of the 80th anniversary of the founding of Penguin Books, the publishing house is launching a series of 80 Little Black Classics. The authors span nations, genres and eras, and there are unknown titles alongside more common household names. Charles Dickens’ The Great Winglebury Duel and John Keats’ The Eve of St. Agnes sit alongside translated works.

The design of these new editions is based on the 1930s and 40s black and white covers, which are as sleek now as 80 years ago. At a slim 60 pages and costing just 80p each, these little pickme-ups are irresistible.

At a slim 60 pages and costing just 80p each, these little pick-meups are irresistable

‘I Hate and I Love’, Catullus The Roman poet Catullus wrote his mistress Lesbia many a smutty stanza.

The most famous, ‘I Hate and I Love’, comprised of just two lines of conflicting emotions, like a Taylor Swift song but more erudite (sorry TayTay). The collection’s other poems are similarly great; a perfect mix of love, anguish and occasional filth. – Magdalene Christie ‘Circe and the Cyclops’, Homer For a tale of derring-do, of bravery, boldness, magic and mystery, look no further than The Odyssey. Books nine and ten involve the escape from the cyclops Polyphemus, a skirmish with cannibals, and the beautiful and enchanting (but devilishly dangerous) witch-goddess Circe. Take it from my classicist’s experience of studying the rather more yawn-inducing book 19, these two are filled with excitement and intrigue. – Julia Stanyard ‘The Wife of Bath’, Geoffrey Chaucer Alisoun, the narrator of ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ and heroine of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is everything her society doesn’t want her to be: openly promiscuous, and not afraid to expose her sexual conquests and endeavours with her previous husbands. In her honest and witty narrative she takes the reader on a medieval conquest, detailing the retribution of a misogynistic knight.

Read this tale and let it give you that burst of female “sovereyntee” to finally pursue your crush on the Cindies dancefloor. – Beth Jamal ‘Woman much missed’, Thomas Hardy This poem has a wistful melody that conveys Hardy’s longing for his dead wife. Its excited nostalgia is heartbreakingly dashed at the close with the truncated lines that seem to mimic him stumbling after her ghostly vision.

– Charlotte Furniss-Roe

19 February 2015

the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Fashion

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Wintour is coming: Fashion Week hitst London... and Cambridge?

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Prepare for the glare the clothes are too creative, it is likely that their opinion will reign supreme over whether the designer can sell any of them, or whether they’ll be relegated to the dustbin of fashion history.

Think of this as the faculty stamping all over your original dissertation idea.

People from Vogue, like the ‘Queen Bee’ Anna Wintour, are the scariest

Another day, another jumper Aleksandra Trzeciak Fashion Contributor

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ollege libraries often become a runway for the newest variants of tracksuits, pyjamas and decadent blankets.

So much pretty

Photo: Polyvore

This suggests that the nonchalant approach to fashion isn’t entirely lost, although there are also specimens who never cease to amaze me by turning up to lectures looking like they just found a way to animate the front cover of Vogue.

I’m not immune to the appeal of fashion as an art form as long as it doesn’t entirely alienate the consumer by creating clothes that are either impractical or blatantly unaesthetic.

Even if making an effort every day seems like a herculean task, with the prospect of May Ball looming, it may be time to think about leaving the comfort clothes at home.

Take Valentino’s newest collection which makes me want to sell my organs on the black market to be able afford any of their dresses.

They are enchanting and intricate; they look like something out of a modern interpretation of Grimms’ Fairy Tales meets the Mad Hatter, or even a Neil Gaiman novel.

They represent to me what fashion should be: an opportunity to play with a myriad of inspirations; cause sighs of envy and, at the same time, show us how not to take ourselves too seriously.

supervisors, the ones who reduce you to a puddle of sweat outside their door, whereas fashion bloggers can be a bit rogue.

They might encourage a look that seems more outlandish, or equally, could be less willing to accept experimental fashion so far from Vogue’s guidelines, much like a PhD student perhaps.

G N I O G T O N I T ’S . . .

F L E S T I E T TO WRI

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hile the end of this week signals the start of week six for us, out in the real world, tomorrow marks the beginning of London Fashion Week.

Over the next few days, newspapers and magazines will be filled with the colours and cuts that will shape our sartorial lives next season.

To many students, this may provide a dash of exoticism to their weekend reading, but to others it will hardly register on their radar. But this can be remedied.

Part of the problem with fashion’s accessibility is that the people interested in it seem to live in their own world, and literally speak another language, when really, the fashion world is not really so different from our own insular universe.

The Catwalk: a stage whereupon designers demonstrate their work under the critical eye of the press and fashion bloggers. If this doesn’t sound familiar, it should.

This is what a supervision looks like in fashion terms; the body under the clothes is not what is important (how often has it felt like your supervisor doesn’t recognise you as an actual human being?), it is what they’re wearing and how they are wearing it that matters. If

Frow: fashion likes a good abbreviation, much the same as we do here; you won’t be able to get away with ‘plodge’ and ‘pidge’ in real life (unless you work in the fashion business where they might pay you to invent such terms).

The ‘frow’ is, of course, the Front Row, the select group who gets the best view of what the catwalk has to offer.

Obviously, it is the same idea as having High Table – we cannot sit with them, and they know it.

Normcore: this term was adopted by the fashion crowd completely by accident, partly as a result of Scandi minimalism’s rising cachet, maybe because people were tired of having comfort so far down in the list of what makes a piece of clothing desirable.

It’s a essentially jeans and a T-shirt, so we have actually been ahead of the curve on this one; it’s just the way you dress for a trip to Sainsbury’s.

Shoulder robing: what fashionistas Image: Karin Barr call draping your coat or jacket over your shoulders, rather than putting your arms in the sleeves for warmth.

Fashion Surely a similar state of affairs to World is not ourselves when trying to put on our so different gown after hours of pennying at Formal.

Maybe we look cooler than we think from ours we do. Maybe not.

Cambridge’s own fashionistas will be our reckoning.

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Food & Drink

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Espresso Library: The newest coffee spot Georgina Wong Food & Drink contributor

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lthough Cambridge is home to a myriad of quaint coffee shops, these can often become saturated by tourists and are a definite ‘nogo’ on the weekend during the rush hour lunch break. Enter Espresso Library, the newest opening on Cambridge’s independent café scene. Planted on East Road, just a brisk walk across Parker’s Piece, Espresso Library has the exterior of an industrial-style building. Once inside, you are confronted by a vast open space, flooded with natural light, and dotted with endless seating options: take your pick from the benches, sofas and window seats. The café’s design has a Scandinavian feel, and accents such as the plush sofas and hanging lamps, punctuated with flashes of yellow, give it an overall polished and sleek effect.

The stylish interior is unrivalled in Cambridge: the fact that you will never have to wait for a table marks Espresso

Espresso Library is not all about the coffee: there is a rotating art exhibition

Library out from its competitors.

The coffee has subtle and dark tones without acidity, and comes served in the café’s signature green cups. Espresso Library’s cooked menu is also fairly extensive, offering healthy options for breakfast such as almond milk porridge served with fresh fruit and spelt pancakes, followed by pulled pork brioche buns and pea and mint soup at lunchtime.

For those with a sweet tooth, however, the options are slightly more disappointing: the selection on display is limited to cupcakes and a very select range of macaroons, and there is also something vastly unappealing about a lone croissant sitting on a plate by itself.

However, Espresso Library is not all about the coffee: there is a rotating art exhibition, currently featuring photography by Martin Bond, and design books scattered around the café.

The open layout provides a friendly atmosphere and also a welcome repose for students to study or chat (did I

Getting Baked: Voluptuous velvet cake Imogen Coulson Food & Drink Contributor

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eek five rolled in, and so did another birthday. In our house of 16 (that’s right 16) birthdays are not hard to come by: it barely seems one has passed before we’re planning the next.

As the baker of the house, this is one of the things I love about living with a crowd. The opportunity to bake another cake is always present, the chance to experiment with some different flavours, procrastinate, and try to be that little bit more inventive.

For this birthday, Red Velvet cake seemed the ideal candidate. This cake has high expectations to live up to: scarlet crumb and snowy frosting like the Hummingbird bakery classic that everyone has drooled over on Instagram.

In light of this, I have largely followed the Hummingbird recipe (albeit very loosely), adding a dash of this and a sprinkling of that. Hopefully it will live

Mmmm

up to expectations, and you can make someone (or their stomach) very happy.

Ingredients: For the cake: 120g unsalted butter, softened 250g golden caster sugar 2 eggs 20g cocoa powder ¼ - ½ tsp cinnamon 2 tubes Dr Oetker red gel food colouring Drop of vanilla essence 284ml pot of buttermilk 300g plain flour (preferably ‘00’ grade) Pinch of salt 1tsp bicarbinate of soda 3tsp red wine vinegar For the cream cheese frosting: 450g icing sugar, sieved 100g butter, softened 1 - 2 tbsp honey 300g full-fat cream cheese, room temperature Zest of 1 lemon

Instructions: The cake: 1. Preheat oven to 170°c, grease and line 3 20cm cake tins.

2. In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy then quickly beat in the eggs, one at time (if the mixture curdles, add a tbsp. of the flour) 3. Sieve the cocoa powder and cinnamon in to the butter mixture then add the food colouring and vanilla extract.

4. Add half the buttermilk, then sieve half the flour and fold through. Repeat with the remaining buttermilk and flour Photo: Imogen Coulson until evenly combined, being careful not

Red Velvet has high expectations of scarlet crumb and snowy frosting to live up to

mention the free WiFi?) – unlike other coffee shops across Cambridge, there is no obligation to leave as soon as you are finished. My only qualms with Espresso Library are the limited selection of cakes, and the slow service: however I’m sure it has the potential to be a first class café in time; the tasty coffee and peaceful, spacious environment are very promising.

Photo: Georgina Wong

Working the week six woes Lottie Limb Food & Drink Contributor

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alfway hall has elapsed, birthday meals at the beautiful Bedouin have dried up like the vegetable-content of my cupboard, and a meal I was once treated to by less student-finance stricken relatives at Midsummer House seems a distant, shimmering memory – an opulent haze of beetroot baked on open coals and nitrogen oxidized goats cheese. At this point in the term, my supplies have disintegrated into crusts and stardust, my cupboard in the gyproom is amply populated by cobwebs and forgotten hopes of healthy eating. If you are in a similar positon, don’t worry, I have a few painless suggestions.

First up: beetroot and goats cheese.

This need not be a grand affair, but it is a winning combination. Supermarkets stock packs of pre-cooked beetroot, but heating it up by putting the bag in boiling water for a few minutes improves flavour; then simply melt the goat’s cheese over the top. Apple and cheddar is a delicious synthesis of a snack too.

Secondly there is a slightly more unusual option, mocked by friends as ‘revolting’, which I call ‘Pasta-in-a-cup’.

It might not compare favourably with the culinary creations of our ‘Getting Baked’ columnist (and my lovely neighbour, Immy) but I feel a certain amount of entrepreneurial affection for this invention. It is, as the name suggests, essentially just uncooked pasta in a mug. Pour kettle-boiled water and leave for 30 seconds. If the outcome isn’t quite cooked pasta then, well, everyone knows pasta’s nicer al dente anyway. It might not sound too appealing on paper, but seriously, don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.

Lastly (just as a reminder) there is always drink – no, I don’t mean alcoholism. Stock up on an array of herbal teas, honey and spices to see out Lent Term and you won’t go far wrong.

Remember, don’t let the stresses and strains of the term be reflected in your diet: life’s too short and food’s too good.

to knock out the air.

5. Add the salt, bicarbinate and vinegar (it will fizz – this is OK) then fold through the mixture.

6. Distribute the mixture evenly between the tins, then bake for around 30 minutes, until risen and firm to the touch. Leave to cool in the tins for 10 minutes then turn out to cool.

7. Once cool, slice off the top of the cakes so they are flat. At this stage the sponges could be frozen, or frosted straight away.

The frosting: 1. Beat the icing sugar and butter together. Once pale and fluffy, beat in the cream cheese and honey until smooth.

2. If at this stage the frosting is not smooth, pop it into a microwave for a couple of seconds and then beat again.

Repeat until the mixture is smooth, then add the lemon zest.

Assembling the cake: 1. Place the first of the three sponges on the cake plate. Insert strips of baking parchment around the edge of the base for a clear defining line.

2. Assemble the three stories of the cake, and then start the crumb coat. Use a large dollop of mixture and a palette knife to make a thin layer. The purpose of this is to seal the crumbs into the inner layers.

Being able to see bits of the cake is okay.

Once done, place the fridge for at least half an hour to cool and set.

3. Once set, remove from the fridge and cover with the remaining frosting.

4. Run a knife dipped in boiling water around the cake and across the top to achieve completely crisp, smooth lines, remove the strips of baking parchment from the base and, finally, decorate how The solution you like.

Image: Lottie Limb

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Lifestyle 28 Getting cosy in Cambridge: Home comforts recreated Mary Nower Lifestyle Contributor

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ndoubtably, it is easy to recreate the normal and authentic Cambridge experience at home: simply find the smallest room in the house and fill it with books. Sit in the corner, and every hour move the books closer to replicate the increasing claustrophobia and sense of impending doom the library elicits. On the other hand, it can be a little bit more tricky to replicate the authentic ‘home’ experience at Cambridge. However, by following these tips, you will soon completely forget you’re even in the bubble: you’ll feel just like you’re sitting at home, but with a much sketchier knowledge of current affairs.

Locate and spend time with ‘the mother’. Every group has got one: if you scrutinise your friends, you’ll find them. They are always on hand at every essay crisis, know everything there is to know about washing and will always have a hearty supply of tea, coffee and decent biscuits at a moment’s notice. Other signs of ‘the mother’ are an incomprehension of ready meals, an ability to locate and judge any Sainsbury’s Basics in a room within 30 seconds of entering,

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and a strange affinity for oversized cuddly sweaters.

Missing your favourite furry friend? Well, you could do what I did and buy a slightly cross eyed toy cat to sit on the end of your bed and completely bewilder everyone who comes to visit. Or, you could go to Johns and hang outside the library, waiting for the college cat to get kicked out by the librarian. She’s very friendly.

With Christmas long gone, do you find yourself pining strangely for a traditional family row? Replicate it perfectly by strolling into King’s Bar and saying with gusto: “I think Margaret Thatcher pursued a sound economic policy.”

Watch the chaos unfurl. If you prefer watching your parents shout at someone else, a visit to any uptight college will do the trick: just wait until a porter senses an unwitting tourist standing on the grass.

Miss your grandparents talking about stuff that really doesn’t matter? Curl up in the John Lewis café mid-week and eavesdrop on all the elderly couples’ conversations about the relative merits of ‘truffle’ and ‘champagne’ coloured cushions.

Warning: This can get controversial.

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Cat-nip your homesickness in the bud

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Can’t fulfil your love of long, scented baths? Although the Lush Kitchen does occasionally sell ‘emotibombs’ ( bath bombs for the shower), you can achieve a vaguely succesful recreation just by taking a long, luxurious shower, with plenty of scented shower gel – if your college’s decrepit plumbing is up to it, that is. Scented candles are a no with the strict college fire regulations, so

Image: Mary Nower instead get some fairy lights (Tiger has some fun colour-changing rabbits) and spray liberal amounts of perfume around your room. That’s basically the same, right?!

The best method for feeling at home at Cambridge is Skype, be it with parents, friends, or techsavvy grandparents. Nothing will cheer you up like a long conversation about the goings-on back home.

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Curl up in the John Lewis café midweek and eavesdrop on all the elderly couples

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

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Lifestyle 29 Hula-hoop yourself happy

Art Column: History Is Now Sarah Maclean Lifestyle Columnist

Rachel Politt Lifestyle Contributor

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earching for things to see on a visit to London I have planned, I came across the History Is Now exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. The exhibition has been said to inspire reflection upon events that have shaped Britain in recent decades; and it is definitely on my list to go and have a look at. Excited as I am about the art, it was the title of the exhibition that got me thinking further: History Is Now. I saw a quote by Terry Eagleton when reading for a Dickens essay recently, that “what we now have in common, paradoxically, is idiosyncrasy”. This is true for all of us here at university: we are all on different ‘paths’, we are all at different stages in our lives, and we all have different personalities. However, I have decided that we do all have something other than idiosyncrasy in common: Cambridge. No matter where we feel we are in our lives right now (or where we will be in the future), for the moment, we are all studying at Cambridge University.

So, while we are here, why can it feel like we are pushed constantly to act as though we are already leaving? From Freshers’ Week, we are reminded of things we should do that will ‘look good on the CV’, we are shown to the careers department, and we are asked about the internships or work experience we are looking to do to prepare for our ‘plan’

We will remember the Capturing Cambridge Image: Sarah Maclean Cambridge after Cambridge. Most weeks the, ‘what may not be the Cambridge we will come that we make are you going to do after university?’ to remember. We will remember the for ourselves chat seems to come up. It’s great to have an ultimate goal in life: even better to be working towards that goal now. But all the ‘future talk’ can get a bit much, especially if you’re who feels like they don’t even have a ‘pla’, never mind a ‘plan’ (credits to Phoebe from Friends there).

It is surprisingly easy to forget to appreciate the present when constantly anticipating the future. We can see terms fly by in a flurry of essays, labs and supervisions, forever approaching exams, and the constantly onrushing end of our university careers. But this

Cambridge that we make for ourselves.

We will remember our friends and the nights in or the nights out. We will remember the beautiful architecture, and the amazing scenery. We will remember the theatre shows and May Week and punting along the river. Cambridge will one day become part of our history; and at the moment, that history is now.

It is easy to forget that our time here is relatively short in the grand scheme of things; yet rather than wishing the Cambridge years away, stopping to appreciate the present could be just what we need for the future.

Eating disorders: silent struggles Tessa Standen Lifestyle Contributor

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ne of the silent killers of eating disorders is silence.

They feed off secrecy and isolation. An eating disorder is a many-headed beast, but every one of its demonic faces smolders with preoccupation, withdrawal, the metamorphosis of personality, and destruction. The spectrum is measureless and no two cases are comparable, but there are some recognisable marks of the beast.

If someone is struggling with Anorexia Nervosa the chances are they will, even if gradually, be shrinking before your eyes; they may try to conceal themselves in swamping sweaters; they may not eat in public, and if they do, their list of forbidden foods will perhaps far outweigh the permissible; skin may start graying or even go translucent; they will always be cold; wounds heal unnaturally slowly.

Bulimics may exhibit bizarre behaviour around food, perhaps eating

Eating disorders can possess and take over lives

normal or even large amounts, but then sneaking off suspiciously; signs of guilt and shame may flicker in their eyes, but ED sufferers are skillful at hiding them; you may notice marks on their fingers and knuckles, and stained or discoloured teeth. Binge-eating disorders may betray themselves in the hoarding of food; eating abnormally large quantities at an abnormally hurried pace.

However, whilst physical appearance, especially weight, is indicative of illness, eating disorders are internalised

The term ‘alternative fitness’ may fill the lonesome jogger or swimmer with complete dread, as the idea of group participation may feel like a form of torture not relief.

However, there is more to group exercise than netball and rowing; be brave and try something new. Hulahooping, frisbee, Zumba or aerobics are all great ways to get ye olde clockwork ticking without even realising it.

Ultimate frisbee, for example involves high energy matches in which the frisbee must be passed between players, without being dropped, and eventually caught in an end zone to score a point. Matches are weekly and are a great way to get directly involved with a college sport in which many of the players haven’t played before. Or the hiking society, if you favour a more gentle approach to exercise, conduct weekly outings that vary between woodland, countryside and riverside routes, all of which are varying lengths and can be a great way to both relax and get your bit of exercise in. If there is a place to try something different for the first time then university is definitely it, and often we say we are rubbish at things just because we have never tried them, such as ballet (eeek), but let’s face it, the standard of our supposed academic intelligence means we can’t be good at everything!

Anything extra is a bonus.

infestations that consume their victims from the inside out. From the outside, everything may seem fine. On the inside, eating disorders possess and take over lives; this can result in fatalities in extreme cases, but mental decline is something all sufferers experience.

They rob their victims of their identity, their familiar routines and interests, friends and loved ones. Eating disorders silence lives. Talk to your college nurse, friends or counsellors if you’re concerned about any of these issues.

Image: Mike Licht

Counselling helps many sufferers

Ultimately though fitness is fitness!

Walking, cycling, taking the hike to Girton for those who are hard core, and everything else you do to get your heart pumping helps. It is sometimes impossible to see how yet even more activity can be squeezed into the Cambridge day, especially that of a Natsci, but if there is a decision to be made between finishing a conclusion and a playing game of corridor tig it is Image: Texas A&M obvious which one you need to choose.

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Sport 30 Aston Villa: too good to be relegated?

Paul Hyland Sport Contributor

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his is the point in the season when the Premier League starts to look that little bit more familiar. The title race has lost all but two of its horses, the usual suspects, more or less, occupy the European spots and the battle against relegation is taking shape.

Less than familiar is the position of Aston Villa. A dismal campaign in which they’ve scored just 12 goals, the lowest in the division, and won just six of their games sees them in 18th place, behind fellow strugglers QPR on goal difference. When a club of Villa’s stature finds itself in danger of the drop, pundits enjoy nothing more than bandying about the tired cliché that a club is simply too big to go down, and therefore, they won’t. Not that it did much good for Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest in 1993, Leeds in 2004 or Newcastle in 2009, all of whom were duly relegated, despite widespread assurances that this sort of thing just doesn’t happen to big clubs.

Enter Tim Sherwood. The once Tottenham manager has been hastily drafted in to salvage Villa’s season after Paul Lambert’s damp squib of a reign. At his unveiling he vowed

Aston Villa

Ronnie Macdonald

to turn Villa Park into a fortress, and reignite the form of striker Christian Benteke, who once attracted envious glances from Liverpool and Tottenham, but who has scored just three goals in 19 appearances this term. But he was careful to note that Villa is not a ‘one-man team’ before setting out his credentials before the press: “I know how to galvanise and get the best out of players and that is what I intend to do with this squad.”

So far, so good. Sherwood unites a love of the game with an affinity with his players and was well thought of by the White Hart Lane dressing room.

He recalled and got the best out of Emmanuel Adebayor and achieved the highest win percentage of any Spurs

manager, leading the White Hart Lane club to a creditable sixth place.

Villa fans might, however, look nervously towards Spurs’ defensive record under his stewardship. Their high line often lacked any suggestion of organisation, and came unstuck against teams like Liverpool, Chelsea and Man City, who all overcame them by a four-goal margin. In serious danger of relegation, Villa need to focus on becoming compact and hard to beat, as perennial relegation-avoider and West Brom manager Tony Pulis can attest to.

Whether Villa’s new man can muster the tactical pragmatism necessary for a job like this remains to be seen.

What might provide this team with some confidence is that only two points separate the teams from 15th to 18th, all of whom are viable candidates for the drop. In 17th, a place above Villa, are QPR, a team in turmoil after the resignation of Harry Redknapp and interim appointment of Chris Ramsey, a man with no experience of managing at this level.

Staying up requires a significant overhaul in just about every area – shoring up their porous defence, seriously improving on the league’s worst goal return, and finally, putting together a string of results. Then, and only then, might Villa survive.

Footballers: Save diving for your holiday Flora McFarlane Sport Editor

D Tim Sherwood has been hastily drafted in to salvage Villa’s season

iving in football – Wayne rooney’s antics revive the debate. We look at some of the worst culprits for diving.

Cristiano Ronald’s theatrics in the 2010 clash against AC Milan could rival any z-list actor’s. A brush on the chin resulted in prolonged writhing on the ground.

King Diver?

Image: Jan S0L0 Didier Drogba’s antics against Napoli in 2012 shows that he confuses his arm with his face. Aronica struck him on the arm but Drogba starts clutching his face. Back to school for him?

The Abominable Eoin: Morgan failing to fire Hugh Oxlade Sport Contributor

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dropping him from the side, yielded 523 runs at an average of 26.15 and a strike-rate of 71.25.

An extended series of disastrous failures with the bat is, however, merely the first item on the lengthy list which can be made of Eoin Morgan’s deficiencies. He is a pitiful captain, entirely deferent to the whims of England’s multitudinous backroom analysts and consequently unable to adapt to the demands of the moment when in the field. He is capable only of spewing clichés at press conferences and post-match interviews, a quality which betrays a dullness of personality which must seriously inhibit his ability

to marshal the squad placed under his theoretical control.

Above all, and a fact which for some reason is all too often forgotten, he is an Irishman who chose not to represent his own country. Yet he has been warmly embraced by the English cricketing authorities, who have been seemingly content to stunt the development of the game in one of its brightest emerging nations for the dubious benefit of a reasonable at best batsman.

Ireland appear to have overcome this slight. England, meanwhile, richly deserve everything currently being hurled in their direction.

any people have highlighted the inadequacy of England’s death bowling in the wake of Saturday’s evisceration

by Australia, and their criticism has been quite correct. The focus on the shortcomings of the slower-ball bouncer has, however, deflected admonishment from the woeful performance of England’s batsmen, exemplified most keenly by that of Eoin Morgan, whose scoreless stay of six balls was brought to an end by one of the very slowerball bouncers which were carted with alarming regularity to the distant MCG boundaries by the Australian ‘finishers’.

Even the greatest batsmen can occasionally register a duck, it might be argued. Morgan’s malaise, however, is now well established. In his last 20 ODI innings, England’s captain has scored 369 runs at an average of 18.45 and a strike-rate of 70.96. To grant those figures some context, Alastair Cook’s last 20 ODI innings, which incorporated what was justifiably considered to be a run of form so miserable that it merited stripping him of the captaincy and Under Pressure: England captain Eoin Morgan

Image: AFP/Getty Arturo Vidal literally had no leg to stand on when he blamed his scuffing of the ground on a player a couple of metres away from him. Blame the ground, yes,.

Blame the defender who couldn’t catch you? No.

Morgan’s malaise is now well established

Headflop

Image: Youtube

Morten Gamst Pedersen might have thought he felt Sagna trip him, or he might have realised that he was never going to catch that runaway ball. Either way, he decided to dive.

Image: Ben Sutherland

There’s no one there Image: Youtube

19 February 2015

the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Sport

31

Healthy hearts for Valentine’s Day Leah Grace Sport Contributor

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his weekend, St Catharine’s College welcomed nearly 200 University of Cambridge students who came to have their hearts screened by Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY). The screenings, which took place on Valentine’s weekend, are designed to diagnose often unnocticed cardiac abnormalities.

Since 1995, CRY has worked to reduce the frequency of young sudden cardiac death by hosting screening events across the country, also providing support for young people diagnosed with a potentially lifethreatening condition and offering support to the families affected.

Every week in the UK, at least 12 young people die of undiagnosed heart conditions and this is something that CRY aim to reduce through the screenings and by creating awareness of Sudden Death Syndrome.

The screening event consisted of an electrocardiogram (ECG): a simple, non-invasive and painless test, examining electrical activity within the heart.

About 5–10% of individuals then require an additional test called an echocardiogram, similar

Happy team, happy hearts, unhappy symmetry to an ultrasound that measures the dimensions of the heart and the blood flow of the heart.

An on-site doctor then reviews each person’s results looking at personal and family history.In the small percentage of cases where results appear abnormal, individuals will require follow up tests. Around 1 in 300 people will have a potentially serious condition.

Leah Grace, the Sports and Societies Officer at St Catharine’s College JCR, organised the event after finding

Image: Leah Grace

out about CRY’s work following the sudden death of a friend in January 2013. “I was shocked to find out that sudden cardiac death can occur in young adults, regardless of levels of fitness.

“People who play a lot of sport were particularly at risk, and students would benefit greatly, seeing as so many of us regularly take part in sport. The work of CRY is really important in helping to reduce the frequency of these tragic, sudden deaths.”

The event was a great success,

Crossword 2.

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illustrious Pre-Raphaelite circle (8) 13. Governmental institution compared to Cambridge by our cartoonist Miranda Gabbott (6)

Thomas Prideaux-Ghee

Down

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“Sudden cardiac death can occur in young adults, regardless of levels of fitness”

Sudoku 6.

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with 195 students screened and two referrals. Harriet Macleod, a student at St Catharine’s, attended the event: “The process was so easy and the nurses really put me at ease. It is great to know I have a healthy heart after just 10 minutes.”

The event was free of charge, as the screenings were funded by the Josh Merrick Memorial Fund. Josh died aged 19, suffering sudden cardiac arrest in his sleep.

He was a talented rugby player and had just passed his fitness exam to become a Royal Navy engineer. He had had no previous medical history of heart problems. Following Josh’s death, friends and family set up the fund to support the work of CRY. Josh’s mother, Karen Merrick, explained, “We’re raising money to provide ECG screenings for young people so that cardiac problems can be picked up and treated.

“Before this happened, I thought anyone suffering from a heart condition would have signs and symptoms, but they don’t. And children who are sporty and active put a lot of pressure on their young bodies.”

Thank you to Karen’s fundraising and to CRY who facilitated the screenings of almost 200 students’ hearts last weekend.

7. The section of mediaeval society who 1. The University students union which traditionally attended Cambridge (8) is not CUSU (8) 9. The opposite direction to where the 6. Item utilised in the bedroom in 50 Pet Shop Boys would like you to go (4) Shades of Grey (3) 12. One of the leading painters in the

1. Action Man and Cosmopolitan are ____ products (8) 2. Acronym of a legal offence involving alcohol and a car (3) 3. What CDE does (8) 4. Bits and bobs (3) 5. Of or pertaining to an African country, particularly well represented at the Fitzwilliam Museum (8) 8. Chieftain or leader (4) 10. The top level Internet domain code for Angola (2) 11. Russian monarch, or governmental expert (4) The solution to this week’s puzzles will be printed in our next issue.

We’re also looking for more crosswords and sudokus to appear in future issues. If you think you’ve got what it takes to devise a bamboozling masterpiece for us, send it over to editor@tcs.cam.ac.uk.

Last week’s solutions

19 February 2015 the cambridge student

www.tcs.cam.ac.uk

Sport 32

Laura Suggitt makes a break for the line during the Women’s Rugby Blues’ comprehensive victory on Wednesday

Image: Will Lyon-Tupman

Emphatic wins for Cambridge Women’s Hockey and Rugby Teams Cambridge Exeter

Sophie Penney Sport Contributor

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ambridge went into this game confident of a win, with their opponents currently at the bottom of the division. The match started with a shock, however, as North Norfolk scored two goals in a mere four minutes. Despite the blow Cambridge managed to pull the game back under their control with a hat trick from Claire Bond. Two more goals came for the Blues before half time, putting them firmly in the driving seat.

The Blues started the second half well with another goal from Cat Cox before North Norfolk replied with a goal of their own. A lovely flick from Rebecca Wilson into the left corner then increased Cambridge’s lead. The match ended as dramatically as it started, finishing early because a Cambridge player received a ball to the knee. A deserved victory for the Blues.

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Gerald Wu Sport Contributor

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ambridge narrowly lost to Exeter 7–8 away on Wednesday in the BUCS Cup. Both the doubles pairs of Michael Pedersen–Vasya Kusmartsev and James Gunn–Jerry Ganendra gave the Blues the ideal start, winning 6–3, 6–4 and 6–2, 6–2 respectively to head into the singles matches 4–0 up.

However, Cambridge could not maintain the momentum. After Kusmartsev and Gunn split the singles matches, the Blues needed another rubber to seal the tie. Despite fighting hard till the end, Pedersen and Ganendra both lost their singles 5–7 in their third set. With the scores tied at 6–6, the match went into a tie-break shootout.

However, Kusmartsev and Gunn lost 2–10 in the match tie-break, meaning Cambridge were defeated despite a brave performance.

Cambridge Notts Trent

Women's Rugby

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Men's Tennis

Women's Hockey

Cambridge North Norfolk

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Charles Martland Sport Editor

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he Blues recorded another emphatic victory on Wednesday, as they saw off Nottingham Trent in the BUCS Trophy.

The opening score came in the first few minutes, with Molly Byrne tap-and-go try from a penalty. The visitors began to look more threatening as the half wore on, yet it was Cambridge who continued to extend their lead, with further tries for Sian McGuinness, the captain, and Ciara Scott at prop who collected a loose ball and stormed over the line from forty metres out.

The second period saw the Blues mix strong defence with excellent counterattack, as Laura Suggitt crossed the whitewash before McGuinness’ excellent run led to another score under the posts. It was another dominant performance from the Blues who have won all their BUCS games this season.